The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, on Friday called for the withdrawal of the time limit on the use of the old Naira notes.

Lawan, who addressed State House correspondents at the end of the Council of State meeting in Abuja, urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to allow the old Naira notes to coexist with the new ones for the mean time.

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He decried the suffering the redesign of naira notes has caused Nigerians.

The Council of State had during the meeting urged the CBN to make the new naira notes available alongside the old notes in order to address the tension created by scarcity of the banknotes in the country.

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Lawan said: “For us in the Senate, initially we felt that this policy in the first place is not a bad one. But we also feel there is no need for time limit.

“Allow the old and the new to co-exist until the old is phase out. So, what is wrong in that? This is not going to be the first country to deploy it that way.

“Other countries have been doing the same thing. And to say that in three months it will be okay? It is not okay, especially in a country like ours where maybe 80, 85, 90 percent of the population lack access to banks.

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“When Britain changed their currency, it took them over a year to change and the validity of the old remains and remains a legal tender. So, why ours? We are not cashless yet and that society is cashless already and they needed even more time.”