Who Wants To Walk Nigerians Down The Monetary Lane Of Zimbabwe?
In an article titled, “Letter from Africa: Zimbabwe, the land where cash barons thrive”, published on the BBC online platform on November 20, 2019, journalist-turned-barrister, Brian Hungwe wrote that the need for cash (at the time he wrote) has not been eased by the release of new Zimbabwean dollar notes.
In the article, he wrote that “In Zimbabwe, cash is king. You need notes in your hand to avoid paying a premium for goods. This has come about because of a chronic shortage of physical cash, which has led to a three-tier pricing model.
“For example, if you go into a supermarket to buy a 15 Zimbabwean dollar loaf of bread, you can pay: Z$15 in cash, Z$18 in mobile money, and Z$20 by debit card.
“You also need cash to pay for bus fares, electronictransactions are not accepted on public transport - and road-side vendors or some small grocery shops only take cash.”
He noted in the article that a family of five with children of school-going age will need Z$250 a week for transport, and extra weekly cash costs for bread, tomatoes, and sugar could tot up to about another Z$150.
He said, yet banks have been rationing cash withdrawals to Z$300 a week, and ATMs were emptied and added that often people wait fruitlessly in bank queues as there were not enough monies to give out.
He concluded that the cash crunch has led to a spike in inflation and that it was running at 100% in June in that particular year which was 2019 when the local currency was officially reintroduced, and that at the time he wrote the piece which was in November of the same year that it was between 300% and 400%, and said it has it also led to a new term: "cash baron".
It is against the foregoing backdrop that it will be expedient to narrate my own experience in this context. However, my own experience was gathered here in Nigeria, and not Zimbabwe. It may be different from that of the Zimbabwean, Barrister Brian Hungwe, as it is devoid of statistical information which he used in embellishing his own story.
Be that as it may, in the next few weeks, statisticians, bankers, and economic watchers may begin to churn out figures that will explain the retrogressive monetary situation in Nigeria. So, my story goes like this.
On February 2, 2023, I went to withdraw money from Zenith Bank, Ojodu branch. On getting to the bank’s ATM Gallery, I found out that I don’t have the time and patience to join the queue of customers that also want to make withdrawals from the ATM. Against the foregoing backdrop, I resorted to doing the transaction at a nearby POS shop. On getting to the POS shop, I was uncourteously informed by the operator that to withdraw N2000.00 that I need to pay a commission of N400 for the service. As I immediately deciphered that it will not be cost-effective to pay such an amount as a commission for the withdrawal of N2000 which will eventually leave me with N1600, I asked the operator how much it would cost to withdraw N5,000, and she told me I will pay a commission of N500.
As we continued negotiating on how much commission tobe paid, the journalistic instinct in me triggered the question, “Why is the commission as high as the withdrawal of N2000 and N5000, respectively, and whichpreviously attracted the commissions of N100?”
While answering my question, I need no one to tell me that Nigerians were already on the road to Zimbabwe as she said the newly redesigned naira notes she use in doing her business were purchased from some “Abokis” that sell foreign currencies. Given her reply, I was shocked as I’ve never heard of where local currencies are sold by cash barons on the black market.
At this juncture, it is explanatory to say that I consciously and deliberately used the headline of this piece wherein Zimbabwe is mentioned to graphically point to the challenges Nigerians are likely going to be facing across consumer markets in the next few weeks if the ongoing monetary chaos brought about by the redesign of the Naira currency is not addressed by the Federal Government, and its agent, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Again, it is no more news that Zimbabwe’s economy has for ages been characterized by macro-economic instability which usually stems from monetary policies churned out by its Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).
Be that as it may, it is expedient to ask, “Who Wants To Walk Nigerians Down The Monetary Lane Of Zimbabwe?” The answer to the foregoing question cannot be farfetched as we do not know if it is President Muhammadu Buhari or Mr. Godwin Ifeanyi Emefiele. However, with time, Nigerians will know who is doing us this great harm.