A senior central bank official said with regard to the distribution of the new naira banknotes, that “banks are prohibited from distributing the new notes over the counter. All new tickets need to go to the ATMs. The central bank's directive to banks is that as they must dispense via their ATMs across the country and that people can go to ATMs to pick up the money. They can't hand out new tickets at the counter at this time until they run out of new tickets. And when that happens, they can then download the old notes. Until they get another supply of new tickets.”

According to him, “it's the only way to make sure new notes flow. Otherwise, what the banks were doing based on our information was that they held the money and gave it to individuals and high-profile customers and did not circulate it to ordinary customers. So we decided that they should only distribute it through ATMs for now until it circulates fully in the financial system.”