Armed robbers shot four people at a PoS terminal in Zaki Local Government Area (LGA) of Bauchi State, on Monday.
The point-of-sales (PoS) operator, and three others who were shot, are receiving treatment at the Federal Medical Centre, Azare.
An eyewitness, Abdullahi Haruna, who is a PoS operator, said: “I had a bag of money with me. They asked me to give them the money at gunpoint, or else they would kill me, so I gave them the bag full of money.”
One of the other victims, Lamaran Bappah, said he went to the terminal to swap his old notes with new ones.
“It was money I saved in preparation for my marriage,” he said.
The armed men were said to have taken advantage of the rush by residents on Friday night, while they were trying to meet up with the initial deadline for cash swap of 31 January, just before the extension.
This comes after the redesigned N200, N500, and N1,000 banknotes were unveiled in December 2022, weeks before the 31 January, 2023 deadline for old currency to be exchanged.
However, with the ensuing nationwide frenzy over the unavailability of the new notes in many towns and cities, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) extended the deadline to 10 February.
Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed visited the victims in the hospital where he sympathized with them.
The Commissioner of Police in the state, Aminu Alhassan, also noted that an arrest had been made.
