CBN Governor Emefiele is engaged in a titanic policy fraud and financial swindle, with his mark being the Nigeria public. This compound deception is of an unprecedented proportion in a nation historically beset by outlandish schemes.
Emefiele’s primary lie was to publicly represent his efforts as a cash swap policy. This enabled him to camouflage a ruthless demonetization policy. Disguising his initiative as an aesthetic currency redesign, Emefiele effectively took 70 percent of currency out of the circulation. If this had been genuinely intended as a currency replacement, then provision would have been made to replace the vast amount of the old currency. That option was never on tap. Having tasted the nectar of vast wealth, power and position, Emefiele wanted more of more. He would make the poor, humble and uninformed bear the costs of his gluttony.
People would be wise not to describe this as a cash swap crisis. It is a liquidity crisis resulting from an intentional policy of cash destruction of historic proportion. Emefiele was apparently unimpressed and certainly unconcerned that half of Nigerians live in the informal economy. He implemented his policy with the eager tenacity of a bully ready to precipitate an alley fight against an unsuspecting and weaker opponent. What he precipitated was a grave financial crisis. That he would set jeopardy upon the meagre holdings of the poor and working class did not seem to touch his conscience. Instead, the calamity of the poor served to prompt Emefiele into action.
This opens the curtain on the second part of the deception. The policy is a form of profit padding or rentier socialism for the banking sector. As such, it also constitutes an informal, regressive user tax on the bulk of the people.
A conservative estimate puts the number of adults without bank accounts at over 40 million. The real number of unbanked people is likely higher. Additionally, millions of others have bank accounts but rarely use them.
For these people, largely the denizens of the informal economy, cash is the means of exchange preferred over digital platforms. Cash is immediate, transparent, and reliable unlike the more high-tech stuff. It is also cheaper. It does not come with associated CBN and other bank fees and charges. For those with modest incomes, bank accounts and cashless platforms are inimical because they drain money from the already humble amounts people have.
Rational economic calculation points them toward cash. Having a bank account or engaging in cashless transactions asks them to purchase a product (the account) they neither want nor need and to be charged a price they cannot afford (bank fees and charges).
So Emefiele concocts this devil’s plan. By bank regulation, he will force people to buy something they do not want at a price that renders them poorer still. This is his version of market capitalism and financial inclusion. For the poor, it is the inclusion of the almshouse and beggar’s village. The aggregate result is a shift of money from the poor to the aggregate balance sheet of the banking industry. When you total the money from the millions of daily transactions, it results in a rentier windfall to the banks at the expense of the average Nigerian.
Emefiele has done a heinous thing which no one has the right to do. He has torn the social contract between government and the people simply to get his own way. Apart from whatever political motives he may have to trip the APC and Tinubu who denied him the APC presidential ticket, Emefiele could not have devised this sinister plan but for ingesting a sordid elitist worldview in the first place. This means he never saw himself like a truly competent and faithful central banker would view his role.
Instead, Emefiele sees himself as the CEO of a behemoth commercial bank with the actual commercial banks serving as his obedient subsidiaries. As such, his mission is not to tend the overall Nigerian economy. His goal is to maximize bank profits. The role he has chosen for himself will be remembered as an infamous reversal of Robin Hood. Emefiele wears the hood of man who steals from the poor to give to the rich.
He has done a splendid job at this soiled task. The breakdown we suffer is not due to incompetence. It is the consequence of intention design and malice of forethought. If only incompetence, Emefiele should be forced to resign. Given that he intended this calamity, he should be forcibly deposited in a penal institution.
Sadly, he is not the only malign character in the unfolding tragedy. Peter Obi is his brother in arms. Like Emefiele, Obi is a second-rate commercial banker who sees the world through the same tainted lens. When it comes to weighing the interests of the people versus the profits of the financial sector, Obi will unbalance the scales to favor his industry. He is devoted to the industry because it profits him. Nothing can change that. Running for president as the Labour party candidate is but a two-bit charade transforming before our very eyes into a deepest irony.
As an opposition candidate representing the working class, Obi should have attacked the CBN’s bungling of the economy, like a hungry dog on a fat bone. Instead of castigating Emefiele, he praised him, entreating the public not to say anything harsh that might scuff the Central banker’s feelings. Although organized labour vehemently railed against the ruthless Emefiele and his policy, Obi blows affectionate kisses and licks Emefiele’s wounds for him.
Put all of Labour and the worker class on one side, Emefiele on the other. You know the side Obi will select. The pull of financial fraternity is stronger than a transient marriage of political convenience with people you do not know or like very much. Obi has shown the public his true leaning. He is a bankster, a card-carrying member of the uncaring elite. He might be the standard bearer of the labour party. But he plays the tune of financial power and dances to it as well.
As such he combines two characters from the world of fantasy and fable. He is one part Peter Pandora and the other part the Pied Piper, leading the hypnotized people to their financial demise.
We can add a third role to his malign repertoire. That of the Manchurian candidate. For he claims to lead the Labour Party, but he really is a devotee of the Emefiele party. Imagine the pain the two men will visit on the households of ordinary people if the junior brother becomes the nation’s president. The destructive duo would certainly lay siege to the economic fate of a nation of 200 million anxious people.