Buhari’s Currency Change Fiasco, Failure Like No Other

 By Tony Eluemunor

Right now, Nigeria is sup-posed to have about the most experienced presi-dent on planet Earth. Or, how many serving Presidents have come onto their own when Gen. Muhammadu Buhari became Head of State on January 1st, 1984. That was 39 years ago! Yet, I’m reminded of Chinua Achebe’s saying in his first book of essays, Morning Yet On Creation Day; that experience does not automatically come from what happened “because much can happen to a stone without making that stone any wiser”.

So, he wrote that experience comes from the lessons we learn from whatever has happened. This means that we could learn the right or wrong lessons or no lessons at all. Yes, people repeat past mistakes simply because they fail to learn the right lessons from past events. 

And if you think about the currency colour change which Buhari superintended over when he was a military Head of State and compare it with the misery being visited upon hapless Nigerians whose only sin is that they re-elected him as their leader after a disastrous first tenure, then you would agree with wisdom has played no role whatsoever in the decision that resulted in the Naira swap. Wisdom? To do justice to that concept I have to borrow an entire paragraph from Barbara Tuchman’s much praised runaway bestseller: The March of Folly – from Troy to Vietnam.

In the first chapter, titled Pursuit of Policy Contrary to self-Interest, and in the very first sentence of that book, she wrote: “A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.

Man-kind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgement acting on experience, com-mon sense and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be.

Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way rea-son points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem soften not to function?” As book introduction sentences go, you can hardly beat this. 31 pages later, writing the concluding sentence of that opening chapter, that late Harvard Professor of History, intoned: “All misgovernment is contrary is contrary to self-interest (of a country) in the long run but may actually strengthen a regime temporarily. It qualifies as folly when it is a perversive persistence demonstrably unworkable or counter-productive.

It seems almost superfluous to say that the present study stems from the ubiquity of this problem in our time”. Well, none can argue that a march of folly has not been in full sail since May 29, 2015.

If experience does not come automatically from past events, then what about wisdom? President Muhammadu Buhari has not only frustrated wisdom, he may have actually betrayed it.

In 1984 he was Nigeria’s Military Head of State. Even before then, by 1976 to 1979, he was Nigeria’s Federal Commissioner for Petroleum.

So, he would have been expected use his wealth of experience to give Nigeria effective leadership. Unfortunately, this former oil minister, who still remains Nigeria’s Oil Minister, has been president for almost eight years now but fuel scarcity has rendered Nigeria comatose. This man who sang the mantra that he built two refineries for Nigeria has been unable to get even one refinery function-al. So, whatever happened to the wisdom that has lain within his grasp? Then just as Nigerians were busy trying to wish away the hardships and setbacks they and their country have faced since Buhari’s inauguration as President, what only a Buhari could throw at any nation hit Nigeria gboam.

Suddenly, the announcement came, that the best parting gift Buhari had for Nigerians, just a few months before his administration’s exit date, was to change the colour of the Naira. And, unfortunately, it is turning out to be the worst punishment Nigerians have ever experienced. Nigerians were asked to take their old currencies to the banks and collect new ones from the Automated Teller Machines. The much-suffering Nigerians did just that but the new currencies did not gush out from the ATMs.

For weeks now, the matter has been growing from bad to worse…such that riots have broken out here and there ….and some people have expressed the fear that the general elections slated to begin in less than two weeks from now, are being threatened. In a most perfidious instance of refusal to accept blame for the failure, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that the hoarding of the new Naira notes is responsible for its scarcity.

Making this sophomoric excuse in Offa, Kwara state, the CBN Director, Consumer Protection, Mrs. Rashidat Mongunu, said the CBN made the new notes available, but hoarders made them scarce.

She added: “Because of the attitude of some Nigerians in hoarding the money, even those that don’t really need the money are rushing to get it and keep, not to spend. But now, everybody collecting the Naira is hoarding it.

So, no matter how much Naira we put out there, if we continue with this attitude and the CBN issue from now till December, it will still not be enough.”

Have you noticed that this high official of the CBN, and in the Consumer Protection section, too, has turned around to blame the victims; the poor Nigerians who are daily forced to abandon their jobs to converge on the banks, waiting often in vain, to be allowed to withdraw money from their very own accounts? 

What could be more wicked than that? This CBN Director told the Offa traditional ruler that “There is Naira out there. I have been in Kwara for over three weeks and we have been allocating money daily. The truth is that if the currency is circulating the way it should and not being hoarded, we shouldn’t have a problem”.

The traditional ruler pointed out to the CBN official that “the people had already deposited all that they have on Jan. 30 in anticipation to start spending the new notes on Feb. 1, hoping that it will be available, but it’s not so”. Please, what on Earth could have hidden such a simply wisdom from the CBN Director? Just as the Director was disgracing the CBN in Offa, the Kogi CBN Branch Controller, Ahmed Sule, said: “We’re expecting our stock of the New Naira notes very soon for distribution to the commercial banks operating here in Kogi.

We’re aware of the difficult times our fellow citizens are in right now, and we expect the (commercial) banks to help ameliorate the people’s sufferings by dispensing as we so directed them.

We’ll soon invite them (commercial banks) to come for their allocations as we’re expecting it today, being Thursday (last week). Then on Thursday, Feb 9th, a CBN Deputy Governor, Folashodun Shonubi, at the Nigerian Society of Engineers even in Abuja, admitted some failure: that the ongoing scarcity associated with the naira redesign and cash withdrawal policy was not anticipated. Finish! Hey, have we forgotten that President Buhari himself did tell Nigerians how to rate him?

While commenting on the discovery of oil in Bauchi state, in the final days of 2021, Buhari said: “Within the next 17 months, Nigerians should be able to judge what this administration has done under my leadership when we came in terms of security, the economy, and the most difficult one which is fighting corruption”. 

If Nigeria sank into the gutter to be-come the Poverty Capital of the world, what earned such a terrible title for the country has been worsened by the problems the currency swap has afflicted on Nigerians. From morning till night, droves of Nigerians drift about searching for ATMs dispensing the new naira notes.

Any person who has the opportunity to profit by the pain the average Nigerians are feeling, have been reaping such profits at the peoples’ expense. But that is not surprising and this nature is not peculiar to Nigerians alone; it is hu-man nature.

That is why efficient and effective governments everywhere mint public policies that would not place the majority at the mercy of the minority.

Governments exist to create the atmosphere which guarantees the great-est good to the greatest number of the populace.

This is the reason real societal development is rated as nothing else but all that goes to enhance the quality of life of the average citizens. Stretched further, that implies that whatever reduces the people’s quality of livelihood takes a nation backward. Here is a country where most towns and villages lack banks or ATMs.

This is a country where people travel from the surrounding towns and villages to the Local Government Headquarter just to use the ATM.

This is a country where such ATMs queues are often 50 persons, even 100 persons, long. Which government official has tried to determine the percentage of the people, both urbanites and ruralites, have been forced to go to bed at night with-out food. Which government official has checked the effect of the currency swap of some people in the hospital wards – who have been unable to buy needed and life-saving medications? 

Who has spared a thought for such Nigerians? And petrol and diesel and aviation fuel are still readily unavailable. Which government official has checked the effect of this currency swap on the daily-paid Nigerians who have been unable to go to work or to be hired as people have abandoned their duty posts to be roaming about in search of new Naira notes? Which government official has checked the level of productivity in both government and private offices as workers have fled from their offices to besiege the banks? 

Which government official has checked the effect of the currency swap on the level of societal gentleness as people push and shove and jump queues and lie and fight while attempting to go from one queue to the other (say as from Permanent Voter’s Card queue to Petrol queue to diesel queue and to new Naira notes queue? This currency change alone has worsened insecurity, worsened the economy and worsened corruption in the land.

And how Nigerians have judged Buhari’s administration is no longer in doubt; nothing fails like failure.

*Eluemunor is a commentator on public issues