The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) yesterday picked up an Abuja-based Twitter user, Oluwadarasimi Omoseyin, with the handle @SimisolaGold and Twitter name Simisola of Lala, for allegedly offering new naira notes for sale on the social media.
Spokesperson for the agency, Mrs. Azuka Ogugua, said in a statement that Omoseyin who deals in fuel, skincare products, among other things was in league “with key elements in the financial services sector” to divert the newly released currency notes.
“Oluwadarasimi Omoseyin, a social media ‘serial entrepreneur,’ who deals in skincare, sales of fuel, facilitation of foreign travels through visa acquisitions, and other businesses, seized the opportunity of the scarcity of the new naira notes to openly market the new notes.
“It is believed that she is in collusion with key elements in the financial services sector diverting the newly released notes away from banking halls and payment channels into a ‘black market’.”
Ogugua further said Omoseyin was in the ICPC detention and was helping the commission with its findings on the criminal trading of the naira and the attendant scarcity and negative economic outcomes being caused by the action.
The agency also noted that the arrest was in furtherance of the collaboration between the CBN, ICPC and its sister anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (ICPC) in implementing the new cashless policy and naira redesign.
Meanwhile, as the currency scarcity bites Nigerians harder, residents of border communities in states including Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Adamawa and Kwara have opted for the CFA franc.
The Punch reported that the residents, including traders and commercial drivers, rejected the old naira notes, insisting that customers who do not have the new redesigned currency must pay for goods and services with CFAs.
The CFA franc is the legal tender in eight West African countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, which make up the West African Economic and Monetary Union, otherwise known as the Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine.
The paper further reported that businessmen and traders in the Zurmi and Shinkafi local government areas of Zamfara State, which border the Niger Republic, prefer the franc to the naira.
It stated that traders in the two area councils had been selling their commodities in CFA due to the fear that they might not get the new naira notes.
