The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) met at the Labour House in Abuja.
This comes just hours after the NLC’s leadership threatened to close all CBN branches across the country due to cash shortages.
Joe Ajaero had advised workers to stockpile food items because the strike with the CBN would be total.
The NLC’s decision to halt the apex bank’s operations prompted the impromptu meeting, which began around 5 p.m. on Thursday.
The two-man delegation, comprised of the CBN’s Deputy Governor in charge of operations and the Deputy Governor in charge of Economic Policy, informed the NLC President that approximately two billion naira was pushed out on Thursday in an effort to alleviate the hardship.
According to a source close to the meeting who spoke with Vanguard, the CBN promised to ensure that the scarcity of naira notes ends soon.
The source said;
They said the money they pushed out today is equivalent to the whole money pushed out within the week. They also promised to work day and night starting from this night to ensure that there is enough money in the banks.
He noted that the CBN denied during the meeting that it was printing money out of the country.
The source denied that the old naira notes had been burned, assuring that there would be a significant improvement in the coming days.
According to reports, the NLC President, Comrade Ajaero, told the CBN delegation that he was not concerned with how much money was pushed out, but rather with ensuring that workers and other Nigerians could collect their money in banks without stress.
The source added;
The President told them that it does not bother us how much they pushed out, our concern is to see that this hardship comes to a stop.
He also told them that they should work day and night to solve the problem and will depend on the feedback from the average Nigerians who go to the banks to make withdrawals and whether there is improvement before Wednesday next week NLC planned to picket the apex bank.
The NLC President, Ajaero who confirmed the meeting said, “We will only know that they are serious when we see improvement.”