Naira scarcity: Residents sleep at ATM points across northern Nigeria

As the scarcity of new naira notes bites harder, many Nigerians in the country’s north are sleeping in the cubicles of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in banks and other places.

While some are city dwellers, the majority of those who spend the night at ATMs are from communities without bank services and must wait until they receive the cash before returning home.

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“I left my house at 5:12 a.m. on Tuesday with the hope of being first in line because one of my friends who works at the bank told me to come early, but when I arrived, I met 15 people who had spent the night there,” said Umar Ashura, a non-academic staffer at the Federal University Dustin Ma in Katsina, who has an account with Unity Bank.

He stated that it was the first time he learned that people spend the night at banks in order to obtain money.

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“It’s surprising because the maximum you can get is N20,000. I could only get N10,000 that day because bank officials said there wasn’t enough cash. “This is our new reality,” Mr Ashura explained to the reporter.

Fahad Aminu, a POS operator in Zamfara State’s Talata Mafara area, said he slept at the bank three times to get cash.

“I went to the Access Bank beside the local government Secretariat around 12 midnight, then slept. This was the third time in three days that I had done so. “I was given N20,000 each, which I distributed to my customers in the morning,” he explained over the phone to Premium Times.

Nazifi Yahaya, a football viewing center attendant in Talata Mafara, said he arrived at the bank around 2:00 a.m. and left “very early in the morning” after bank officials loaded money into the machine.

Banks usually load cash into ATMs in the evenings and early mornings. The majority of the money loaded in the evening is withdrawn before nightfall, and some residents claim to spend the night there in order to be the first to withdraw when the machines are loaded in the morning.

Some residents said they preferred spending the night at the banks rather than waiting in long lines during the day when they weren’t sure they’d get their money. Others who come from remote communities without banks are forced to spend the night there as well.

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