Culture is an important factor in project success. The principles, policies and practices that work in a developed country like England, may not work in a Third World country like Nigeria. This is due to the different cultures in these two different countries. While a developed nation has high per capita income because of higher rate of employment; diverse industrial mix, including a large services sector; developed financial system; high literacy level; people having a longer life expectancy; and well-developed infrastructure such as roads, educational system and hospitals, developing nations struggle to ensure food security, roads for transportation of goods and people, education facilities, pipe borne water and electricity. Lives are thus difficult in developing nations, especially in the cities where there are traffic hold-ups and housing shortage.
Before the discovery of money, people traded by barter. This practice entailed the exchange of goods and services for goods and services. So, if I give you beans, you will give me yam or rice, the equivalent of the beans I gave you. According to economic history, the goldsmith receipts were the first form of money. The receipts issued to the owners of gold who kept them with goldsmiths were the first to represent money as anybody that presented these receipts to the goldsmiths that issued them were treated as the owner of the gold. Thus, the receipt for a weight of gold was as valuable as the gold it represented. People could then exchange the receipt for a product or service which is the equivalent of the value of the gold. Money made fair trading possible as in the pre-money era some goods could not be easily exchanged for small pieces of other goods. Examples are goats and horses.
Around 700 B.C., the Lydians became the first Western culture to make coins. Other countries and civilisations soon began to mint their own coins with specific values. Using coins with set values made it easier to compare values and trade money for goods and services. While Nigerians complain that the metal money (coins) is too heavy to carry, the problem with paper money is that they can easily wear out if not properly handled. Data from the Central Bank of Nigeria showed the cost of printing new naira notes jumped by 75 per cent from N33.3bn in 2016 to N58.6bn in 2020. The cost of printing new naira notes stood at N49.5bn in 2017; N64bn in 2018 and N75.5bn in 2019.
Cashless economy is a good policy, but it cannot be implemented in jiffy as Rome was not built in a day. CBN ought to implement the policy over a long period of time, say six months. The first step should have been ‘awareness creation’ among the general public about the advantages of the policy. CBN will then make a policy that will make payment for goods and services cheaper by using plastics (credit and debit cards) than using physical cash. The basic needs of Nigerian masses are food and transportation. The cashless policy, which CBN first attempted in 2012 but failed, would have been successful in 2023 if the CBN had researched how an average Nigerian lives. But instead, CBN was more concerned about the negligible percentage of Nigerians, including kidnappers, who are keeping a substantial and significant amount of naira in their houses and offices. In any country without ‘rule of law,’ no control measure will work.
Average Nigerian wants to eat by buying piecemeal food and groceries daily and go to his place of work and market using cash. CBN ought to have put in place a structure that will make travel cards possible in Nigeria first, especially in the cities, so that people can travel for days and weeks without using cash. Food vouchers ought to have been introduced. Cashless policy is one of the most hotly discussed topics within the global financial sector, and two separate studies have now shed new light on United Kingdom progress towards a cashless society. According to the latest report from software recommendation engine Capterra, more than 50 per cent of UK consumers are paying with digital wallets. The main advantages given are convenience and safety, with digital payments allowing people to leave their house without a bulky wallet.
The transition towards cashless, and the effects this will have on society, is one of the most hotly debated topics within the fintech sector in the UK. Mobile payments have considerably increased in the past decade but there are still unanswered questions about how a truly cashless society would work in practice – or, indeed, if it is even possible. It is certain that people cannot be forced to embrace it.
Cashless policy is already killing a lot of small businesses in Nigeria. The fact is Nigeria needs more than cashless policy to curb kidnapping, vote-buying and horse-trading during elections. What we need are implementation of our already existing law on vote-buying and enacting a law making it an offence for anybody to keep more than N500,000 in his or her house and office.
