By Ray Ekpu
When Mr Godwin Emefiele announced in October last year that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) would be redesigning the N200, N500, and N1000 notes many Nigerians might have thought that they would have an opportunity to touch clean naira notes. The truth is that the common people of Nigeria never have a glimpse at clean naira notes in Nigeria.
The date we were to begin to receive the newly designed notes
was December 15 last year. With my cheque book in hand I made a tour of three
banks that day. No luck. I did not get the new notes. I did not even sight it,
not N1000, not N500, not N200. I said to myself that the first day might prove
difficult because of some logistical problems. The next two days I did a tour
of the banks again not just as a customer seeking to get served by the banks
but also as a reporter anxious to know whether what the CBN Governor had promised
us had come to fruition. Na lie!
On the third day I only got some clean old notes, not some clean
new notes. I was partially happy having the pleasure of touching clean old
notes for the first time in a long time. After one week I repeated the rounds.
Still, no luck. The banks were largely dispensing old notes. A currency crisis
was on the horizon. There were stories of fisticuffs between bank officials and
customers.
There were shouting matches at the bank counters and bank
premises. Then the Central Bank thought it had a solution to the crisis. It
ordered the commercial banks to pay N20, 000 in new notes at the counter to
customers. Again, the reporter in me woke up. With a N20, 000 cheque leaf in
hand I visited three banks, one after the other.
Each of them said they had no new naira notes. I then said,
“Okay, pay me in the old currency.” They said, “The CBN said we should no
longer dispense old naira notes.” So I went home angry and koboless. The third
day of the new N20, 000 directive I went out, cheque in hand to test the
efficacy of the new directive. At one of the banks they were paying N2000 per
person.
The bank official seemed to take pity on this old man. She asked
that I be paid N3000. I thanked her profusely for the favour. On the same day I
went to another bank with a N20, 000 cheque leaf. When I got there the official
said they had no new notes but I could be paid N10, 000 not N20, 000 in old
notes. I accepted what seemed that VIP treatment and collected the dirty old
notes and went home tired and frustrated.
I am telling all this as a personal account of a policy that was
supposed to reform the banking industry, curb inflation, rein in kidnappers and
eventually check vote-buying in the elections next month. The truth, the naked
truth, is that this policy has flopped and is most unlikely to achieve any of
the objectives because of the immense corruption in the system.
Mr Emefiele blames the commercial banks for the crisis. The
commercial banks blame the Central Bank for giving them less money than they
need. There is a video of a bandit in Kaduna that has gone viral. He is seen
with a huge pile of the new notes in the forest. How did he get them?
Corruption. Young boys and girls are selling the new N20, 000 notes in N200
denomination for N30, 000 to party goers. How did they get them? Corruption.
So Mr Emefiele did not reckon with corruption when he kept
crowing that the deadline of January 31 was “sacrosanct.” As the deadline
approached and there was uproar all over the place and demonstrations in a few
towns he had to rush to Daura on a Sunday to ask President Muhammadu Buhari to
extend the deadline to February 10.
As the crisis got worse even after the extension some bank customers did
something bizarre. They undressed at some bank branches to show the level of
their desperation and frustration. Some APC Governors trooped down to the Aso
Villa to plead with Buhari to allow both the old and new currency notes to
circulate side by side until the end of the year.
Buhari asked to be given seven days within which to take a
decision. As at last week the volume of currency outside the banking system was
said to be 900 billion naira, down from 2.73 trillion naira. I do not think 45
days was a long enough period to call in that volume of money in a country
where banks do not exist in the rural areas and where travelling long distances
by road is an uninsured risk.
The 10-day extension will do very little to improve the
situation because since the new notes were not easily available many people who
had the old notes were, and are still, holding on to them for their daily
transactions. Those who seek to use their plastic cards get easily frustrated
because since there is a large increase in the number of transactions through
this method there is enormous congestion. Many of the transactions don’t go
through even after several attempts.
When Emefiele appeared before the ad hoc committee of the House
of Representatives last week one of the gains he mentioned was the likelihood
of its checking vote buying. Perhaps he is unaware of the fact that most of the
major players in the forthcoming elections won their primaries through vote
buying.
And what did they use? Dollars, not Naira. The major players in
politics are major players in the banking industry and this cashless policy is
not likely to catch them flat-footed. They must have stockpiled the dollars
that they need for the elections. This policy may only affect very small flies
in politics and of course the generality of the people who have been pushed to the
wall.
At the meeting with members of the ad hoc committee of the House
of Representatives Emefiele blamed the commercial banks for the crisis but it
is also obvious that the new notes were not discharged into the system in
sufficient quantity. All the banks cannot be guilty of what they are accused
of. They do not need to witness the anger and agony of their customers as it is
beginning to happen in several bank branches.
Part of the problem is that the management of the whole affair
is shambolic. The second reason is that this policy was enacted without due
attention being paid to the poor or inadequate infrastructure for cashless
transactions. Nigeria is largely a cash propelled economy.
Seventy percent of our population live in the rural areas and do
their daily transactions by cash. It does appear that this policy may have been
designed to achieve more of political results than economic. Mr Bola Tinubu,
presidential candidate of the APC has said that this policy was targeted at
him. The Governor of Kaduna State, Mr Nasir El-Rufai, has asserted that some
elements in the presidency apparently do not want Tinubu and the APC to win the
election. What
I know is that there is obvious confusion at the presidency
about which candidate to support. There was a statement recently from the
presidency that the President was neither for nor against any of the
presidential candidates. That is balderdash. The President had said sometime
ago that he hoped that he would be handing over to an APC presidential
candidate. Recently, he also said that he would campaign in 10 states for APC
including Tinubu.
And just a few days ago Buhari said that Tinubu would be the
next President. All of this, I believe, is to dispel the doubt that seems to
have existed among some APC top shots on Tinubu’s candidacy. Before the
primaries there was the move to shoe-horn Dr Ahmad Lawan, Senate President,
into the position of presidential candidate of the APC.
This plot failed only because it was not possible to get a consensus presidential candidate even though the coup plotters had selected Lawan. But at the last minute Buhari gave his nod for the primaries to go ahead and once that was allowed Tinubu got a roller coaster ride to the ticket.
But
that success did not mean that his opponents had given up the business of
trying to derail him. We have only a few weeks to see how the game will play
out. It is then we will know whether the behemoth called the Aso Villa is for
Tinubu or not.
*Ekpu, a veteran journalist is a commentator
on public issues
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