Commercial banks are insisting on the Central Bank of Nigeria February 10 deadline to deposit old N200, N500 and N1,000 banknotes despite a temporary halt of the process by the Supreme Court.

Financial institutions like Stanbic IBTC, Union Bank and other commercial banks said they would stick to the February 10 deadline for accepting old naira notes, disregarding a Supreme Court order restraining CBN from following through on its directive of rejecting the old denominations at the expiration of its ultimatum. 

The banks sent email reminders to customers urging them to deposit their banknotes on Friday, warning the naira notes would lose their validity after the deadline.

“The design of N200, N500 and N1,000 will no longer be accepted as a legal tender after Friday 10 February 2023,” Stanbic IBTC wrote in an email to their customers on Thursday. “Deposit your old notes now at any of our branches.”

The Union Bank urged its customers to “rush” to its branches to deposit the old banknotes.

“Avoid the rush! Visit your nearest Union Bank branch to deposit your old naira notes today,” the bank stated in a post that included an image of a notepad with the words “1 day to go” written on it. The image included the expiring N200, N500, and N1,000.

Similarly, Access Bank reminded customers to “hurry now” and “beat the new February 10th deadline to deposit your old (200, 500 and 1000) naira notes” in an email sent to customers on Thursday.

Seeing as they were not joined in the Supreme Court case filed by Kogi, Kaduna and Zamfara, the banks believe they are only subject to the CBN directive regarding the expiration of the denominations and since they have not received a counter-circular regarding the matter from the apex bank.

On Tuesday, a seven-member panel led by Justice John Okoro halted the CBN’s withdrawal of the old naira denominations in a ruling in an ex parte application brought by the three northern states.