New Notes: Better Elections or False Dawn?

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A few days ago, news broke out about a new move by the Nigerian central bank to redesign some of its currency denominations, specifically the 200, 500, and 1000 naira notes. The news has been met by different reactions from individuals and professionals.

With the general elections less than 6 months away, every move and decision by the incumbent government at this point is met with magnifying glass and scrutinized with political sentiments.

The move when it first emerged was met with scepticism and criticized as an unnecessary move that has no direct effect on the dire nature of the economy.

According to the governor of the central who addressed the issue yesterday, the move was in a bid to arrest vote buying, and control the amount of money in circulation.

In his speech he affirmed that 80% of fiat in circulation are outside the vaults of commercial banks. He implied that this is as a result of hoarding by some individuals.

In a country where almost 90% of its citizens are living under $1, it is a huge indictment on the ruling class with the elections on the horizon, as most of its citizens can barely afford 2 meals a day not to talk of hoarding money.

The country might be home to many millionaires and billionaires, but it's unthinkable that these business moguls would be keeping cash in their houses and or vaults.

This is a clear indication of the political class keeping huge sums for political financing and vote buying.

Apart from the obvious implications of curbing vote buying and controlling the amount of money in circulation, there are other far reaching implications such as campaign financing, money laundering, terror financing, payment to kidnappers etc. But these are all afterthoughts to a politically inclined Nigerian.

The presidential election is headlined by 3 individuals with very different qualities. One is a northern former vice president who's basically a Nigerian in the diaspora these days, spending all his days in Dubai just to return every four years to contest for the presidency.

The other is a former governor in the southeast who prides himself as the only governor to handover a positive account to his successor and is riding on the vibrance of the youths.

But with regards to this matter, the most rumoured to be affected is the southwest baron who's known as king of the southwest and believes that this is his turn to be president. The only man to publicly own bullion vans, with the depth of his funds believed to be bottomless.

It is believed in some quarters that this is a deliberate attempt by the incumbent to frustrate his party man's ambition.

With this new development, the monies hoarded by him and his cohorts to buy votes would then become useless. With antigraft agency EFCC to be stationed in bank halls to monitor the return of old notes, it would make it difficult for people with questionable funds to go to banks for deposits.

This development might not have a direct economic impact (this government has always been clueless on that front), but if properly implemented and monitored might mitigate against a lot of monetary fraud and vote buying. That's me being big on hope though, because this is Nigeria.

On the flip side, the central bank governor already contradicted himself when he tried to link the move to the bank's cashless policy. I mean, how do you want to run a cashless economy and you're printing new notes? It doesn't add up.

And there's the issue of corruption in the fight against corruption as our antigraft agencies are most times just mere hunting tools in the hands of powerful men.

The economy is in shambles, the naira is valueless and inflation is at an all time high, but the government is still more concerned with spending billions to redesign its currency. Just like most things about our leaders, it can be depressing, but one can't avoid the other benefits that it poses. I hope the president can follow through with the initiative without fear or favor of anyone, even from his party.

How I wish they would embrace the blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, then they wouldn't have to be spending unnecessary sums just to do what you could've done with a few codes.

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