On The Coming N5,000 Note By Peter Claver Oparah

From the erratic,
unpredictable and unsure
brainwave that rules the
country economy at present
came the decree one sultry
morning that the Naira is
about to be restructured. The
high point of the
restructuring is the plan to
print N5, 000 notes and the
conversion of lower
denomination of the national
currency into coins.
The issuing authority quickly
unfurled the design and
nature of the envisaged
super note, as well as the
faces marked to don its face.
Almost immediately, we
heard that the Central Bank
has earmarked a huge N40
billion for the printing of this
new currency. Although it
was to deny this later, it has
not told us what it plans to
spend for this project. Yes,
this came as a decree given
the way and manner it was
announced and how the
Central Bank governor and
the government he works for
have gone on this thus far.
There was no interval for us
to catch our breath, least of
all, make our own
contribution or even our
opinion on what should be a
hefty policy decision that
would certainly affect us all.
For a regime that was
whining publicly for self pity
the other day, one would
have expected some level of
deference to the views and
opinions of the governed but
this was ignominiously left
out. The government and its
agents in the Central Bank
did not expect our input. Like
most policies of the
government, Nigerians
matter little and their
interests do not count on
issues like this. The
announcement of the decree
itself was to fulfill all
righteousness as the currency
restructuring or whatever
term it was given, could as
well have been implemented
unannounced.
But Nigerians did not keep
quiet. They shouted and
blared it on rooftops that the
so called restructuring
especially the printing of a
new N5, 000 is not going to
be for them. Labour, Nigeria
Bar Association, Nigerian
Medical Association, civil
society, the press, the critical
mass, market women,
students and indeed every
segment of the population
have voiced their disapproval
of this policy and called
government to drop it. They
are still shouting because
they know they are the prime
targets of these cut and dry
economic policies. Even the
National Assembly has
weighed in and asked the
Central Bank to rescind this
plan but like in the infamous
fuel price increment,
Nigerians must be talking to
the winds as President
Jonathan and his so called
economic team have come to
lend their weight to this
unpopular policy. The stage
is drawn for another round
of cold battle between the
government and the
governed and this leads one
to inquest whom government
makes it policies for and to
what end such policies are
made.
In opposing the planned
printing of a super note,
Nigerians have marshaled
some impeccable points and
two stands out for their
impregnability. One is the
inflationary whirlwind the
policy will enhance while the
other is that the decision is
not in consonance with the
cashless policy of the present
government which led to a
ceiling on daily banking
transactions for both
individuals and corporate
bodies. So far, there has
been no convincing rebuttal
of these points nor has the
government enriched its own
new policy with convincing
reasons why it must force its
way through the stiff
resistance of Nigerians, as it
is committed to doing at
present. The absence of
faultless reasons backing this
new policy has fueled the
impression that, as is usual
with Nigerian officialdom, the
government is working from
the answer to the question in
a vital policy that would
certainly take its tolls on long
suffering Nigerians.
At best, what Nigerians are
seeing is a government that is
retching up a cacophony of
reasons; spurious
afterthoughts; ranging from
the petty to the absurd to
unleash another economic
policy that will certainly
exacerbate the already
precarious economic state of
famished and poverty racked
Nigerians. So far two of such
reasons stand out, not
because of their value but
their self contradictory worth.
One of the reasons the
government is dropping is
that printing the N5, 000
notes would save the costs
spent on printing lower
denominations of the nation’s
currency. Again, it says that
the proposed N5, 000 notes
would not be mass
circulated. One begins to
wonder if the printing of the
N5, 000 notes would lead to
the stoppage of the printing
of the lower denominations
by which it is true that
money would be saved. But
the knockout punch is how
the government can achieve
limited circulation of the
proposed N5, 000 notes
when it has stopped or
reduced the printing volume
of the lower denominations.
Pray, what monetary policy
effectively restricts access to
a currency in circulation?
How can government achieve
such restriction in a situation
where the printing of lower
denominations has been
compacted or stopped so as
to achieve the dream of cost
saving? Is the government
planning to print the N5,000
notes and restrict its
circulation to its inner caucus
and economic team members
to be used as pieces of
artifacts? Again, what does
restricting or stopping the
printing of lower
denominations lead to if not
the gradual elevation of the
envisaged N5.000 note to the
single denomination?
Whichever way you look it,
the reasons are as silly as
they are impracticable even
as they sell the impression
that the government wants to
print fancy notes that would
be employed as a status
symbol or an easier way of
moving or storing illicit cash.
But the common man who
wears the shoe knows where
it pinches hence his
unassailable fear that the
proposed N5,000 notes will
unleash another round of
inflation that will take its toll
from the already sapped and
pummeled common man. In
studiously opposing this
policy, he has practical
lessons to guide him. The
common man operates in the
practical market where it
happens. This is far from the
paper market-a poor mimicry
of advanced markets in
developed societies-where
our so called economic team
operates. The common
Nigerian directly feels the
pangs of the wild inflationary
sound bites which have
become the lots of the
Nigerian economy and this is
far from the scripted and
heavily talcumed figures the
government and its agents
periodically humour
themselves as inflation
figures. So he needs no
tutorial on its nuisance value
because he can feel it with
his bare hands. He knows he
is the direct victim of such
rash and thoughtless policies
because by the time lower
denominations are flushed
out of the system, he would
be left at the mercy of the
harsh economic realities such
policies inflict.
Every past introduction of
higher denominations of the
Nigerian currency had all led
to uncurbed inflation and
when this happens, the
government had looked the
other way and life has
continued its assured slide in
a major oil produced country,
wracked to the seams by
poverty, want and disease.
Do Nigerians still remember
that N1, 50k, 25k and 10k
are still legal tenders? In the
dingy chamber where
government forges its
crooked economic policies,
they are still legal tenders but
they have long been
consigned to extinction by
the deliberate falsity that
accompanies government’s
policies. The route they took
to extinction is their being
converted into coins, which is
the same deadly road the
new policy wants to sentence
N5, N10, and N20 to. Given
our experience in the past,
the new policy will phase out
these currencies and N50 will
become the lowest
denomination by the time
this new policy starts
functioning. When this
happens, prices of goods and
services would automatically
mark up, sometimes in
higher proportion than the
new reality. When we
consider the fact that what
passes as the Nigerian
economy is a primitive,
chaotic, predatory and
volatile jungle where survival
belongs to the fittest, the
Nigerian poor, who constitute
over 80 per cent of the
population will be at the
receiving ends of unflagging
inflationary wild cats fed and
nurtured by this policy.
Our so called economic
policies, such as the one
under review, is no more
than the whimsical
brainwaves of the elite
hustlers who run our
economy, who unleash such
polices depending on the side
of the bed they wake up
from every morning and on
where their bread is
buttered. They are
complemented in the so
called economic team by a
bevy of free loaders whose
prosperity is traceable to
their access to the common
till. They care less what
befalls the common man in
forcing through those policies
that rob the common man to
enrich them. They revel in
promoting such banal farce
and unseen paradox as the
claim that Nigeria is the third
fastest growing economy in
the world, in one breath and
that poverty has risen to over
80 per cent mark in the
other. We run an economy
with no benchmarks, no
workable indices for
measurement and no
safeguards. In its stead, what
we get is flattering self-
written reports that speak of
economic prosperity as
Nigerians bleed from
worsening economic woes
and continue to die from
hunger, poverty and want.
One would not be surprised
if, at the end of the day, the
obduracy of the government
and its fronts in forcing
through this policy is not
driven by the ultra corrupt
and heartless contract culture
which sees government
contract as free access to
share government largesse.
As this has funded so many
anti people policies in
Nigeria, it is not strange if
the government is insisting
on printing new currencies at
a time Nigerians are ranged
against many problems, is
informed by that deadly urge
to pander to the demands of
this rotten contract culture.
As has been shown, the
government lacks convincing
reasons for this ill informed
decision that will certainly
hand the battered citizenry
the short end of the stick.
What is even most galling is
that this policy is coming
shortly after another of such
cut-and-paste policies was
forced on Nigerians whereby
citizens are tied down to
certain limits of banking
withdrawal and deposit in the
name of enforcing a cashless
society. That the same people
that forced through this
cashless policy are now hell
bent on printing higher
denominations of the nation’s
currency makes their
intentions and desires for
Nigerians suspect.
It is the common Nigerian
that bears the brunt of the
failure of the half baked
economic policies as the one
that is informing this wild
excursion. He becomes the
singular victim while the
enforcers of these policies
smile home with their dollar
denominated loots. He stays
the long night alone and
bears the heavy burden of
failure while our economic
adventurers move on to the
next lush garden. It is so
scary yet so real in the
present day Nigeria.

Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail:
peterclaver2000@yahoo.com

#CONSENSUS 2015