It is so unfortunate that Nigerians have to go through this level of hardship at a time they have seen more than enough hardship, especially in the past 6 to 8 years. Cost of living has been hellish over these years, most especially cost of food items, and other essential commodities like fuel, cooking gas, diesel, kerosene, etc. Yet, Nigerians have been subjected to yet another version of hardship with regards to the scarcity of the newly redesigned Naira notes by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.
With mincing words, the availability and sourcing of the new Naira notes is as herculean as a poor Nigerian securing Visa to European countries, and to make matter worse, when you eventually see the new Naira notes, you have to pay heavily to get it. For instance, you could pay as much as 2-3 thousand Naira to get just ten thousand Naira (10,000), most especially from the POS operators. Hence, the outcry across the country over this issue, and almost everybody is blaming the CBN, most especially the Governor of the apex bank, Godwin Emefiele, over this lingering issue.
Meanwhile, the CBN Governor is not entirely responsible for this issue of new Naira scarcity witnessed across the country. Yes, this might sound strange to your ears, but that’s just the sad reality on ground. But most of us will hardly believe this story, and that’s because most Nigerians are fanatic subscribers of the bandwagon ideology, as such, they hardly take out time to investigate further about certain burning or trending issue(s), we so much believe and trust in rumours, hearsay, allegations, false narrative, etc.
First of all, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele has consistently maintained and equally assured Nigerians that there’s enough cash to cushion the adverse effects of the new Naira policy, but we always find it extremely difficult to believe that story, not until recently that both the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, stepped up their efforts, and began to make several arrests of those sabotaging the efforts of the CBN, through several ungodly means.
We have seen arrest of several bankers, including branch managers and others, for allegedly hoarding the new Naira notes and equally selling to some wealthy politicians and some other money bags in the country. What do you make of this? That some of these banks are simply into the business of selling the new Naira notes to the highest bidders at the detriment of the poor masses. We have seen in recent times as well, the discovery of hoarded new Naira notes at different bank branches across the country. Yet, most of us have continued to believe that the CBN is the sole cause of our predicament(s).
The business has become so lucrative for them that they are not willing to give up on it anytime soon. Yesterday, I stumbled on this particular news, of how a branch manager of a certain bank in the country, reached a business deal with one politician to exchange the old Naira notes worth about 300 million Naira for 250 million of the new Naira notes. In other words, the politician in question agreed to forfeit 50 million Naira just to have his 300 million Naira worth of old Naira notes changed to the new Naira notes, in cash. And that’s what have been going on, underground at different banks across the country!
Most of us are so terrible that we do not consider humanity in most of our dealings, rather, we are most concerned with how much gains we are getting at every given situation. This is the same reason why many things are not going right in our country, simply because we place monetary gains above every other thing in life. At least, in recent times, we have seen some people spraying bundles of the new Naira notes at parties, which further justifies the fact that some of these commercial banks make abundance of the new Naira notes available to the highest bidders.
Even as this issue is bitting harder on Nigerians and inclusive of government efforts to tackling the situation, many of these banks are still heartlessly indulging into this very inhumane act. Even if the CBN may not have printed the amount of new Naira notes to completely solve this problem, but I’m so certain that there are reasonable amount of the new Naira notes in circulation, only that this group of people hoarding and selling the new notes have continued to frustrate all efforts in tackling the ugly situation.
Photo credit: Google/Punch Newspapers/Economic Forum/Daily Post
