The ‘Buried’ Naira Notes
InMarch 2002, THISDAY held a seminar in Abuja on the management of Nigeria’s foreign exchange market. Two days before the seminar, on a Saturday, the Board of Editors held a last meeting that went on for hours. After concluding deliberation, our chairman, Nduka Obaigbena, asked: “Is there anything else we have left out of our planning?” One hand went up. The editor in question said we had made a fundamental error of judgement in the list of invitees to our seminar because we left out the black-market operators otherwise known as ‘Mallams’ who were most critical to the subject under discourse. Almost everyone at the meeting agreed that was a grave omission on our part. But as we were about to re-open debate, another editor interjected, “But we have already invited the Mallams.” Roaring with laughter, he added: “The real Mallams are in the banking hall!”
I first recollected that episode two decades ago in a column, ‘Now that the party is over’ but I could not but reflect on it again following announcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Godwin Emefiele that three Naira denominations (N200, N500, and N1000) would be redesigned. “People with illicit money buried under the soil will have a challenge with this but workers, businesses with legitimate incomes will face no difficulties at all,” President Muhammadu Buhari was reported to have said at the weekend to justify his approval of the policy on which the jury is still out.
To be sure, Emefiele was very clear about the rationale for the decision, and it is difficult to fault him. I also don’t share the position that the policy cannot work, afterall some people said the same when the banking consolidation exercise was instituted by Chukwuma Soludo in 2004. But from my findings, the reason for the current free fall of our national currency in the parallel market is because those Naira notes “buried under the soil”, to borrow Buhari’s words, are being exhumed and dumped with forex Mallams in exchange for dollars at any price. Therefore, if this whole idea is to catch thieves, then the real joke may be on the president. I am willing to bet that every available Naira note—whether stashed in overhead or underground tank—will enter bank tills. Yet, if at the end people use the exchange rate of the Naira to measure the success or failure of the policy, there will be a problem. As we have learnt over the years, we live in a country that defies the law of gravity: Whatever goes up does not always come down!