BY LEKAN SOTE
Evidence that the forced migration of Nigerians into the cashless society failed woefully is in the final decision by the Central Bank of Nigeria to obey the ruling of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and return the old N500 and N1000 notes into circulation.
Now, you ask, “What was the point of the apparently ill-thought-out policy that eventually blew up in the face of CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, whom President Muhammadu Buhari deftly threw under the bus through the indicting and blame-shifting statement of Garba Shehu, his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity.
Garba said: “The Presidency wishes to… state… plainly that at no time did (the President) instruct the Attorney General of the Federation and the CBN Governor to disobey any court orders involving the government and other parties.”
Recall that the President read a statement to Nigerians, after the first ruling of the Supreme Court, asking the CBN to release into circulation only the old N200 notes, and continue to hold on to the old N500 and N1000 notes that many speculate may have been incinerated.
Shehu said, in his submission: “The President never directed anybody to defy court orders, in the strong belief that we can’t practice democracy without the rule of law (which the President has disregarded many times), and the commitment of his administration to the principle has not changed.”
He then delivers the excuse of the typical lackadaisical manager that President Buhari is: “The President is not a micro-manager, and will not, therefore, stop the Attorney General and the CBN Governor from performing the details of their duties in accordance with the law.”
What happened to the standard procedure in government, for the President to ask the Attorney General, who represented the government in the court over the matter, to brief him about the outcome of the hearing, and then instruct the Secretary to the Government of the Federation to request the CBN to act on the judgment?
Anyway, those who know the ways of this civilian government run by a retired military General, say the body language of the President is more legible than the handwriting on the wall of Babylon. So, as they will put it on the streets of Lagos, “We understand.”
You can’t imagine how relieved the average Nigerian John Doe on Main Street felt when they began to “experience” the return of the old notes into circulation. CBN Governor Emefiele may never know the amount of damage he caused to the economy and to the people of Nigeria.
That it took the generally passive President and CBN Governor so long to figure out the obvious failure of the policy is baffling. Maybe the naive Nigerians who were edging them on because they thought the policy would check vote buying have vicarious responsibility for the foolish policy.
Shehu confirmed the approval of the cruel policy by Nigerians: “As for the cashless system (that) the CBN is determined to put in place, it is a known fact that many of the country’s citizens, who bear the brunt of the sufferings, surprisingly support the policy, as they believe that the action would cut corruption, fight terrorism, build an environment of honesty and reinforce the incorruptible leadership of the President.”
“That it took the generally passive President and CBN Governor so long to figure out the obvious failure of the policy is baffling. Maybe the naive Nigerians who were edging them on because they thought the policy would check vote buying have vicarious responsibility for the foolish policy”
Many have died, and many have also gone through what you may consider a needless famine situation. Even if you wanted to change the currency, why should the burden fall on the members of the public?
Ideally, the commercial banks should have had the burden to collect the old notes, return them to the CBN and pay out the new notes that would have been issued to them by the CBN. But the CBN had to think of a difficult way to implement a policy that should never have caused any hardship.
It should have been seamless and allowed to run for at least 12 months, instead of attempting to squeeze the process into three months, a period that was clearly inadequate. It makes you wonder if there is anyone in the entire CBN system who understands the idea of project management or the use of the Critical Path Method to manage project implementation strategies.
Still, there’s not much respite for the Nigerian public despite the reversal of the policy. Dr. Muiz Banire, a former Commissioner for Transportation in Lagos State says, “I do not immediately see light at the end of the tunnel and I believe that Nigerians should not be that optimistic.
“Even with the court order and its implementation, it is certainly still not yet uhuru. Finally, there is an urgent need for massive publicity of the development as a lot of Nigerians are still scared of transacting in the old notes that have just been resurrected.”
The interest group, Coalition of Northern Groups, which thinks the reversal has no significance to the lives of the people, laments: “Innocent families are going hungry, businesses are crumbling and tension keeps mounting, (while President) Buhari and his lackey, CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, appear to be in isolation or living in total denial.”
In addition, they allege that “(President) Buhari only deceived the nation by faking a directive to the CBN to respect the judgment of the Supreme Court, knowing full well that he did not mean it (for the ruling) to be carried out.”
President-elect, Bola Tinubu makes a deft disregard of an absentminded President and the legendary inadequacies of his CBN Governor, as he expressed the opinion that the Supreme Court’s ruling “restores both the rule of law and economic decency.”
Also, he notes: “This is not the end of the story. It is merely the beginning of a more comprehensive solution to our economic challenges.” Those who can read between the lines suggest that the Supreme Court ruling has pointed in the direction that the incoming administration will be travelling on this vexing issue of old notes.
If you still do not get it, it means that another CBN Governor will be allowing the use of all old notes, pari passu the new notes, probably beyond 31st December 2023, after the current CBN Governor would have been fired or persuaded to resign.
If anyone would conduct a survey to ask if CBN Governor Emefiele should continue in office one day beyond today, the response may be an overwhelming nay. The gentleman put poor Nigerians in dire financial straits over an otherwise good policy whose implementation was muddled up.
But by far the biggest goof is that the CBN (probably) never consulted with the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy, to chart a path for the significant expansion of the internet bandwidth on bank portals, to enable the banks adequately cope with the anticipated traffic that would come as a result of the intention to migrate Nigerians into a cashless society.
Never mind the platitude by the Minister for Communication and Digital Economy who surprisingly claimed that the banking Internet portals adequately coped with the surge in the demand for use of fintech devices to make electronic transfers.
Many Nigerians are yet to obtain reversals of monies withdrawn from their bank accounts but never got to the beneficiaries. Maybe the Minister was talking about another country or another time.
Clearly, poor policy implementation overtasked the fragile technology infrastructure.
