Suspected members of the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists have distributed old naira notes to scores of commuters in the Lake Chad Basin ahead of the February 10, 2023, deadline of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) cashless policy.
Passengers said the terrorists on Saturday distributed the old notes at Mairari village on the Maiduguri/Monguno Highway in Guzamala local government Area of Borno State.
They said the ISWAP terrorists were dressed in military camouflage and drove on two-gun trucks sharing a reasonable amount of the old notes to the commuters.
One of the passengers said, “The insurgents positioned themselves under a tree and stood by the roadside with bags of old naira notes. We left Monguno at about 12 noon. As we approached Mairari, there were no checkpoints in the area, so we became uncomfortable.
“They stopped us and asked if we were going to Maiduguri and started giving each person N100,000 old naira notes, but we could not believe it. They gave each occupant of the Golf Volkswagen,” he said.
Another source added that “the group simply told us, ‘If you think you can go to their banks and change it to new naira, go and do so; may Allah make it beneficial to you.”
