N5000 Notes, N5, N10, and N20 Coins: Minting to Cost at least N40 Billion

News recently hit the media waves about the proposed launch of a N5000 note alongside the redesigning of existing notes in order to give them new looks. However, information filtering in has it that this project by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will cost nothing less than N40 billion of Nigerian taxpayers’ money. Out of the said amount, N11.8billion will be spent on the new N20, N10 and N5 coins.
According to a member of the board of the CBN, discussing with Punch Newspaper under conditions of anonymity, “The bank is spending over N40billion on the production of new coins and notes… The N40billion is the total sum for the production of the coins and the new notes.
According to the source, the CBN, at its board meeting two months ago decided that most of the new notes and coins would be printed by the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company, while only the N5,000 note would be printed by a foreign firm which had “the technology and the capacity to handle the sensitive features in it.”
Already mixed reactions are trailing the announcement of the introduction of the new notes. While some have described it as a disrespect to the likes of Tafawa Balewa, Alvan Ikoku, etc, the grandson of one of the women whose faces are expecting to appear on the proposed N5000 note, Seun Kuti, has condemned the idea saying, “If I were the FG, I wud establish more schools, improve on the educational system rather than come up with N5000 note idea… The N5000 note is nothing a common man can use, so printing d money is not the way forward.”