News

Disappearing ink dooms polymer naira

March 21, 2013

It's like a kiddie magic trick gone desperately wrong: Five years after the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced the country's first polymer notes, citizens are complaining that the inks on them fade so badly merchants won't accept them.

A bus driver in Lagos told PM News Nigeria, "My conductor regularly quarrels with passengers who … reject the faded notes [as change], even though some other passengers were the ones who gave us the worn-out notes. Government should just phase them out and let us return to the old paper notes."

The Central Bank of Nigeria has conceded that the currency must be changed, due to fading and shrinkage problems, as well as higher production costs and environmental issues around the disposal of polymer notes.

Tunde Lemo, deputy governor of operations at the Central Bank of Nigeria said the bank was planning to convert 5, 10 and 20 naira notes to coins, dispensing with the polymer notes for those denominations. The 50 naira note would be converted back to paper, he said.

"However, if Nigerians show preference for retaining the 5, 10 and 20 in banknotes instead of coins, it shall no longer be in polymer," Lemo told reporters last year.

The PM News story also cited issues with the supplier of the polymer notes, Australia-based Securency. An Australian newspaper reported in 2011 that Securency had paid bribes to CBN officials in order to obtain the contract to print Nigeria's polymer money. An investigation of the bribery allegations is ongoing.

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