By Elvis Eromosele
The amount of queueing Nigerians have been subjected to in the last couple of weeks is unprecedented. It is equally unbecoming. It’s almost like the country had gone back four decades.
Fights have broken out in queues at bank facilities, filling stations and INEC and LGAs offices across the country. There are trending videos of people stripping naked in protest inside banking halls, others hitting each other with queue dividers and one person has been confirmed dead inside a banking hall, somewhere in Asaba. Nigerians born in the 2000s, GenZs, should be forgiven for thinking the end of the world is here.
On
a typical day, a person will queue to collect new currency notes at the bank,
rush to queue at the filling station to buy supposedly subsidized petrol at
exorbitant prices and then drive to the closest INEC office to queue for
permanent voter cards (PVCs). This is not sustainable.
The worst part is that no one is accepting responsibility for the inanity.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, has consistently held that the
banks are given enough stock of the new naira notes. The endless queues in and
around banks question the veracity of this claim. The CBN has now alleged
sabotage by the banks and has deployed a monitoring task force to keep an extra
eye on their operations. This shows the frosty state of the relationship
between the banks and its regulator.
The CBN inspection and ICPC teams have caught a couple of banks
hoarding the new naira notes. They should continue the good work that they’re
doing to maintain control.
The
reality is that the suffering is real, the pain is widespread and anger is
rising to a boiling point. The CBN must act to ease the pain. It is a case of
demand and supply – make more new naira notes available across the banks,
monitor the deployment and see the relief across the land.
The naira redesign, according to the CBN, is expected to
strengthen the economy, reduce the expenditure on cash management, promote
financial inclusion, and enhance the bank’s visibility of naira supply. It also
seeks to drive the quest for a truly cashless society. It is a good thing.
It is a change management issue. The CBN ought to have managed it
better. In systematically phasing out the old note, it should have introduced
the new notes earlier and ensured availability in ATMs all over the country
with a restriction on the amount that can be cashed per time.
The cashless policy beyond the cash supply challenge is a digital
banking infrastructure issue. Digital banking deals with everyday essentials,
including checking balances, reviewing transactions, making payments and
transferring funds, whether using USSD, banking apps or online/web-based
systems. It is thus a sad commentary on the actual state of the nation’s
digital financial infrastructure to see apps and servers collapse under the
strain of increased traffic. It shows a lot still needs to be done to
strengthen the system.
Transactions are not completed; alerts fail to arrive and all sorts of strange
messages occur for the first time.
During this season of madness, some banks have been heard
whispering to customers that the network fault that they are complaining about
is failings from the telecommunications side. Telcos do not need to respond to
this allegation. They simply need to work closely with financial institutions
to make the transactions seamless. The first step in solving a problem is
recognising there is one.
One more thing, the CBN must also look at removing ALL charges for
online and POS transactions in the short term. It can later look at a reduced
fee for these transactions as volume has risen.
The N100 and N50 naira notes are not being redesigned, they should
be widely available. CBN must stick with the deadline and work assiduously to
ease the flow of cash. The cashless economy cannot happen overnight. We can
admit that progress has been made.
On the fuel queues which have persisted for over five months, the NNPC Limited
consistently claimed it had enough fuel and urged the public to shun panic
buying.
The problem has remained. The DSS, in December, gave the NNPC
Limited and marketers 48 hours to end fuel scarcity. We are still here. The
House of Representatives also gave the NNPC Limited a week ultimatum to end the
artificial scarcity of petroleum. It has long expired without any respite.
The Presidency has equally waded in with little success. The
problem has proven intractable.
The economics is difficult to follow. How can the government be budgeting
trillions for fuel subsidies and Nigerians are buying at double the approved
price? Something is not right here. In a season of a global oil boom, Nigeria
may be the only oil-producing nation with citizens queueing long indeterminate
hours for fuel. Something is missing here. Someone is not telling Nigerians the
truth. Between NNPC Limited and the major Marketers, there is a gulf. The
citizens are been made to suffer and pay for their failings.
In addition, the federal government cannot continue to pretend to
be unaware of the problems that Nigerians are going through. It must, as a
minimum, look to fix it, apply necessary sanctions and ensure the availability
of petroleum products across the country.
News reports indicate that no fewer than 6.7 million Nigerians
have yet to collect their PVCs less than two weeks before the general
elections. Over two million of this number are in Lagos and Abuja alone.
Before we heap the blame on the citizens, let us remember the
reports of missing PVCs, poor communication about collection points and claims
of extortion against INEC officials since the collection of the cards commenced
on 12 December. Many people were told their PVCs had not been printed after
over six months of registering. That is untidy on the part of INEC. Bank ATMs
cards are now printed on demand why should PVCs take forever?
Thankfully, the umpire has been responsive. It set up collection
centres in the wards, started sending text messages to people to ease the
process and even extended the collection deadline.
These are good steps. But INEC can do better. Registration and
collection on PVCs should be open all year round in its offices. This ad-hoc,
fire-brigade approach doesn’t cut it any more.
The PVC queue is important. It is expected to prove useful in determining the
next leader of the country.
February 25, 2023, Nigerians will have to queue to cast their
votes. Let us queue patiently on the day. When we queue and vote wisely, we can
take back Nigeria
*Eromosele,
a corporate communication professional and public affairs analyst lives in
Lagos.
No comments:
Post a Comment