Many thronged to the offices of the Central Bank of Nigeria across the nation on Friday following the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari that Nigerians should take old N500 and N1000 notes to the apex Bank.
People had lined up in front of the CBN office in Marina, Lagos as early as 1:00 am and the crowd later became uncontrollable.
Someone who got there at 6 am said he was given tag number 406, meaning over 400 persons were already on the queue before his arrival.
We gathered from a source that a Kaduna resident had to relocate to a hotel close to the CBN office the night before so he could get there early enough. By the time he got to the venue at 3:00am, he was given tag number 134.
When the exercise got seemingly out of hand and the bank officials found it difficult to control the crowd that kept increasing with time, people were asked to return to their respective Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) to store old notes.
It was at this point that the CBN issued a directive to commercial banks to start collecting old N500 and N1000 notes.
