Sterling Bank has debunked claim that one of its branches in Ado Ekiti, the capital of Ekiti State refused to give the new Naira notes to customers after it had received it for almost two weeks and created artificial scarcity and hardship on Nigerians.

Recall recently, a video surfaced on social media showing the huge sum of cash being reserved in the bank. In the viral video, a deputy director of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who identified himself as Owoeye said there was no excuse for keeping the cash, and the Apex bank would sanction the bank and staff incharge.

According to a statement by the bank, it claimed that the Naira notes referenced in a well-circulated video online were received prior to the re-configuration of the branch’s Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) to dispense the N200 denomination.

“We would like to formally state the facts surrounding our branch in Ado Ekiti.

“The Naira notes referenced were received prior to the re-configuration of the branch’s Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) to dispense the 200 Naira denomination.

“On January 23, 2023, a regulatory official visited our branch in Ado-Ekiti and the vault contained N 6,000,000 in N 200 denominations.

“During the visit, the official observed that we had ran out of N1,000 and N500 notes on that day and were unable to load the N200 as the ATMs had not yet been configured to dispense N200 notes.”

It added that “At the time of the visit, the subsisting instruction was that the newly designed notes were not to be dispensed over the counter.

“All our ATMs have been dispensing the available quantities of the N1000 and N500 denominations of the newly designed currency as received since the commencement of the policy. We have also successfully reconfigured our ATMs nationwide to dispense N200 notes.

“All denominations can now be withdrawn from our ATMs and over the counter in line with regulatory pronouncement on February 2, 2023.

“We hereby confidently assure the public that the branch was not hoarding any funds and that Sterling remains at the forefront of ensuring that this exercise is a resounding success.

“Together, we will all overcome this inconvenience and come out stronger.”