It is heartwarming that the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu has been tackling feverishly what he sees as the potential impediments to conducting free, fair and credible elections in two week's time. He has met with the top hierarchy of the Police Force and has extracted an assurance from them that they will play their part professionally and apolitically. He has met with the boss of the NNPC and asked for preferential treatment in the provision of petrol for use by the Commission during the elections.
President Muhammadu Buhari has assured us several times that the elections will be free and fair. The Army has also assured us that men and women of the Armed Forces will, unlike what had happened in the past, be very professional and apolitical in their election duties. With all of these assurances, we are expected to believe that we will benefit from the fruits of free and fair elections. Besides promises made by the various institutions on their level of preparedness for free and fair elections, a former Head of State General Abdulsalami Abubakar who is head of the Peace Committee has held a couple of meetings with the political parties and their presidential candidates. He has extracted from them assurances of good behaviour by them and their parties. So on paper, everything seems to be going well for the elections.
But to think that everything is okay and that we should roll out the drums is to live in a world of illusion. That would mean that we have ignored the principal institution that can make or mar the elections: the voters. That would mean that in our election preparations, the voters don’t count. I say so for two reasons. One, there is still a severe shortage of petrol in several states. There are still long queues of petrol buyers who queue for hours without being able to get petrol into their tanks. There are also petrol stations that have refused to accept the old currency since there is uncertainty about the time that it will cease to be legal tender. So if the voter is unable to get petrol into his car before or on Election Day how will he vote? If commercial vehicle operators are unable to get petrol for their vehicles how will they carry people to the voting centres?
Two, I notice that there is also a fire-brigade approach to solving the currency problem because the issue has brought trauma to the people. Happily, the Council of State, a group that includes all former rulers of the country and the current president and governors has now thrown its heavy weight into the currency matter. The wisdom of its decision is unassailable. They approved the currency change but they also asked that the new currency be provided in abundance or the old currency be given the breath of life so that it can exist side by side with the new currency.
It doesn’t appear that the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, averted his mind to the fact that the two currencies, old and new, can coexist without severe abortion of whatever the original motives for the change. His faith in a cashless economy is very strong but does he also have faith in the provision of infrastructure to make the cashless stuff work seamlessly? I don’t know. The Federal Government has also been persuaded into accepting that all payments, yes all payments, made by the Federal Government, the 36 state governments and the 774 local governments will, in the nearest future, be made in the cashless template.
The idea seems very attractive on paper but what does paper know? Does paper know that most rural communities where three quarters of the local governments are located have no banks, ATM galleries or POS centres? Well, the Edo State Government has opted to be the first guinea pig for this cashless transaction at the state and local government levels. It wants the policy to be effective in the state from March 1 this year. Its experience will inform us about the wisdom or lack of it of attempting a nationwide policy of this nature at short notice without first providing the infrastructure and enlightening the people.
Now as I said earlier, everything, nearly everything, has been done in readiness for the elections coming in two weeks’ time. The only uncertainty is whether people will have access to money, old or new, with which to run their lives or with which to participate in the elections. If people don’t have money to buy petrol for their cars if petrol is available or to pay their fares in a commercial vehicle if commercial vehicles are available, how will the elections be successful? So money is important, isn’t it, for successful elections?
since 1999 there has been considerable voter apathy in our elections. In 1999 only 52.1% of the registered voters voted. But the figure rose to 69.1% in 2003. Since then the figure has been going down. Here they are 2007 (57.6%), 2011 (55.3%), 2015 (42.7%) and 2019 (35.66%). In several other African countries, the figures have been very impressive. In Rwanda’s 2017 presidential election, the voting strength was 98.2% while in Equatorial Guinea its 2016 election recorded a voting figure of 92.7%. Angola and Seychelles recorded more than 90% in their 2017 and 2016 elections respectively. In Nigeria, there has been in the last few months an upsurge of interest in the elections shown by the youths. Will the currency problem become the dampener? I don’t know. These two problems, petrol and money scarcity, can produce unintended consequences as far as the elections are concerned. It can force the contestants to provide transportation for the voters. That is vote buying. It can make the contestants transfer or pay cash to potential voters as they have done in the past. That is vote buying. And if vote buying is one of the issues that the CBN intended to prevent it has inadvertently rolled out the red carpet for vote buyers and sellers.
One thing that ought to worry Buhari and Emefiele is that the currency conundrum has compelled some APC-controlled state governments to drag the Federal Government to the Supreme Court. The court cases were filed by Kano, Kaduna, Kogi, Niger and Ondo, all of their governments of the APC family. The Supreme Court has temporarily ruled in their favour while we await the verdict of the main case. These state governments are complaining that their constituents, their citizens, are going through hell on the currency issue and that is why they are in court to ask for a remedy for the situation.
These court cases will make the governors folk heroes in their states and the country and the people on the other side anti-people, people who do not care about the welfare and well-being of Nigerians especially the poor and vulnerable. I wonder how these cases will make Buhari and Emefiele feel even if what they wanted to achieve by this currency swap was something potentially uplifting. For Buhari who is leaving the scene within the next three months it is simply a disaster. Is this how he wants his administration to end or is this how he wants to be remembered? These negatives may be unintended consequences but they are undesirable consequences, especially for a government that has not performed admirably.
Amazingly, the CBN has not mentioned how much of the new currency it has put into the banking system. It has only been talking about how much it has withdrawn from the system. Failure to name the figure of new notes put into the system gives the impression that the figure is less than impressive. Why should this be a secret except if the idea is to hide the fact that the new currency put out to the banks is less than adequate for a smooth transition from the old to the new currency? That is also why when it asked that people can be paid N20,000 of the new currency at the counter the banks were never able to pay that because they never had the money. Instead, many of them decided to shut down to avoid the anger of disappointed bank customers. In any case, in a normal setting, why should the CBN dictate to the banks what to pay their customers irrespective of the amount of money they had in their accounts. Commercial banks have a contractual relationship with their customers and the abortion of the positive benefits of that relationship is a violation of the customer’s right. That is a dictatorship.
It is doubtful if the CBN had in its arrangement for the currency a plan B. its plan B seems to be only the fact that if Buhari approved his proposal he would stand by it through sun or rain. That is why the CBN Governor had the temerity, in the midst of people’s suffering, to insist arrogantly that January 31 was “sacrosanct.” But even Buhari could not save the date. That date failed, when the pressure came, to be sacrosanct. That should be a lesson to the CBN and other government institutions that in all their calculations the well-being of the people they serve is sacrosanct. The CBN must push some more new notes into the system so as to mitigate the suffering of the people and restore the confidence of the public in the banking system. Many of those who are lucky to have the new notes are not spending it. They are holding on to them affectionately like babies because they are not sure of getting more.
The major reason why the cashless policy cannot be rushed is the fact that the infrastructure is not in place. We thought we were making some progress when President Ibrahim Babangida’s government brought the concept of the People’s Bank and Micro-Finance Bank from South East Asia. They are successful there because there are good supporting facilities – good roads, good transportation, good security, good communication network, constant electricity etc. These things are in short supply here apart from the fact that small-scale businesses that exist in rural areas cannot be sustained where there is the existence of micro-finance or commercial banks. What that means is that the cashless policy implementation has to be gradual as we continue to provide appropriate infrastructure.
At present, we can do money transfers from banks; use POS; transfer money from our accounts to other accounts by the use of our phones and POS operators can transfer money for those who patronise them. We cannot possibly do any comprehensive cashless policy within a few months unless we are magicians. It has to be gradual and its benefits must be explained to people, particularly rural dwellers. We cannot become America in one day. America did not become America in one day.