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I'm Mark Philippineau, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Nigerians are in a cash crunch. The Central Bank announced a plan late last year to replace

its largest currency notes. We're talking about the 200 notes, the 500 notes, and the 1000 notes.

Officials said the new notes would cut down on counterfeiting and help the cash-oriented economy

move towards electronic payments. Well, first, they didn't print enough of the notes,

plus they didn't give people enough time for the swap. So in a country where cash is still

king, chaos ensued. Many banks were shut down because fights kept breaking out in banking

halls because the banks did not have enough cash to supply to people who had turned in their old

notes. That's our West Africa correspondent Anu Adioje. I went to a bank that was so full that

the bank provided a tent outside to protect people who were waiting in the scotchings on to wait.

Yeah, so it's been chaotic. It's put an extra cost on people's daily lives at a time when

the economy is not doing well to begin with, and it's kind of maddening for a lot of people that

they cannot withdraw their own money. Nigeria's Supreme Court even stepped in, extended the

deadline for when the old notes would still be legal. That is tomorrow. But businesses have stopped

accepting those old notes, right? I spoke to an analyst who said, look, the Nigerian authorities

have kind of broken this social contract and show people are rejecting the old notes because

they don't have confidence that if they collect the old notes as a business or as an individual

and they take it to the bank, they will be able to get new notes out of the bank. Adding to the

mass, there's an upcoming presidential and parliamentary election and this currency issue has

become a political football. Yeah, I mean, it takes only two minutes for anything to become a

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