 Residents of Saint-Mont-Abio-Couta and Au-Gon-State took to the streets to demonstrate their dissatisfaction over the scarcity of new narrow nodes and the attendant excruciating pains of the new narrow policy and petroleum products. On Tuesday the 7th of February 2023, the protesters were seen chanting protest songs on Aladeh-Charmie, Fajol and Chomori in Obatoko area of Abio-Couta. Protesters blocked the popular moor in Asheri area in the state along Abio-Couta-I-Baron Road while another protest was witnessed at Panseke area. The scenarios forced some business owners to lock up their stalls over the fear of being attacked by angry residents who cannot access their monies at various banks. Protesters set fire on unused tyres at moor junction, thereby obstructing traffic and inbound Abio-Couta-I-Baron express. They did this because of their displeasure over the current situation across the country. We all recall that the Central Bank of Nigeria last October announced that it was redesigning the 200, 500 and 1,000 narrow bank nodes. Governor Mayfield, the CBN governor, had announced 31 on the 31st of January as the deadline for the expiration of old bank nodes. Due to public outcry trailing the currency scarcity, Mr. Mayfield extended the deadline till February 10. He added that money-deposited banks would continue to receive the old bank nodes even after the deadline, despite the deadline extension. However, the scarcity of the new nodes has persisted. Joining us to discuss this and more is Ambrose Igboke. He is a public affairs analyst. Mr. Igboke, so good to have you join us. Good evening. Good evening to you. Good evening. I'm sure that you, just like every other Nigerian is feeling the pain, I'd like to add excruciating pain of not being able to access your money. You do know that you have money, but you're unable to get access to it because of, you know, the situation of mopping up all of the old nodes. And now, just as I said in my intro, we're seeing a lot of public outcry and some people have resorted to violence. Did you ever see this coming when the CBN first announced that these monies were going to be taken back in and of course new monies rolled out? Well, first of all, most Nigerians depend on daily subsistence for survival. So they make their money daily, visit to feed, they go out the next day and so they live at that subsistence level and they go to a Nigerian's live at that level. So they need cash to trans-back. Now, you have denied that of that. A lot of these netizens have closed. You have denied families you're going to call. You have smocked up small businesses. Change of design or quality is something that comes off, you know, from time to time. CBN cannot be senseless to know that it has the power to change money from time to time. And therefore, plan for it. You don't just make a purchase, you have stung by a deal. And then you drop off from the bed in October. And now, facing out of the new Naira notes, I mean, almost Naira notes in three months time, they introduced the new word by December 15. And under 40 days, you expect those new words to be lit for December 15 to January 35. I don't know who is telling the senior governor of these fairy tales. I don't know whether I know the sheer volume of a lot of logistics that goes with this. After a chief governor wants to know, you know, that there's something wrong. There's something fundamentally wrong with either the processing or the money itself through the senior governor. So, Ambrose, you're saying that this wasn't a clearly thought out plan? I'm sorry, do you not think that this was a clearly thought out plan before it was rolled out? Do you not think that they did some feasibility studies before they decided to take this stand? Yeah, there was no plan. There was no plan. It was, I think it was enforced. Because if you plan, conceptically, logically, you know that this would work. Now, the CPS, I thought they were planning very well initially. When they would draw a limit, saying they don't want people to have access to it to manipulate the election, that was so, so logical that you placed a limit. Now, after placing that limit, that should have taken care of those people who are afraid that would spend large amounts of money for election buying or vote buying. Now, you went ahead and showed that the people who were scarred of the new Nara notes just sent back the old Nara notes, they circulated back to the ATM and across the counter, and the banks, they were not doing it. During the panic measures, just before Christmas, you couldn't release the money in churches to banks, so you are controlling it. Now, when you are going to be backfired, you suddenly bring the commercial back. Yeah, I agree that some commercial banks, they, you know, they are involved in some, or wholesome practices. But the problem is caused by the CPS. Common sense says that you cannot move up to over two trillion Nara, and you pay them nearly 300 billion Nara. If you want that, you need to circulate. So, which do you mean absorbing CPS of improper planning? I'm curious. Why do commercial banks have their own blame system? The CPS should be ready to take black portion of the grain, like on foresight. I totally understand where you're coming from, of course. Every Nigerian is feeling this pain, but I'm trying to understand to what end would the CBN government, of course, under the purview of Mr. President, what do you think the end game would be if you're saying that it's not about fighting vote buying? It was a, you know, an impulsive thing, you know, it was a spur of the moment plan. But why would they want to put us in this kind of, I mean, look at what we're going through as it is, look at the kind of uproar that it's getting. What do you think the end game is here if all of this wasn't thought out and now this is the blowback? What do you think government is trying to get out of it? Now, some people have started saying and it's a school of sorts that imagine that maybe, just maybe, that this is deliberate to cause confusion in the land because there's nothing else that explains this bedrock. At one sight, you are stifling off the bedrock, you are giving us cover of access to your money, papers are flaring up. On the other hand, you are ensuring that there's no special approach of collecting, people cannot buy kerosene to cook, people cannot buy fuel for their generators, cannot buy fuel for their cars, and other vehicles. To motion out of the elections as such, she will say, wait, order to be made without deliberate. So many Nigerians have started saying it's very deliberate because it has never happened this way. It is not deliberate. They want the actions taken. We can't have the national security mention and the Republican property make small money to make the demands of Nigerians or they allow the old people and they don't know to circulate for some months. So that we spoke what is the price that we are putting Nigerians on that. But that's what banks cannot say so much. In fact, I want the price of my bank all for the best. I can't know who yet. A lot of some of the bank branches have closed. People have finished getting angry. We have seen videos of bank staff in their neighborhood did attack. They've been there all the day. Today the bank advance has went to the Secretary of the United Nations. They were not seen or seen being lynched. We don't know what to say to society. But if they go back and forth, they should go back and forth. But if they go back and forth, they should go simultaneously. Very soon this year, UK will change out their currency. And then it will circulate with the old ones for years. Okay, like three years. Let's talk about some of the positives that some sudden pundits have pointed to. Many people have said that the new Naira shortage has triggered a lot more online banking and digital banking. Making people resort to transfers. But then of course we also have the situation of the bank transfers also having a problem. The platform is all crashing as a result of the fact that they've seen the kind of traffic that they've never experienced before. Well let me tell you, all this is a cosmetic explanation. I wouldn't have to talk about Naira before. First Naira's were not being tracked because there is a failure of the agency that is responsible for that. They should not be using the excuse of that deal or in the future, to cross cover for Nigeria. Our Naira don't suppose to be tracked. Each Naira has its own tracking number. They have security features that can be tracked. If someone is not tracking it, then it is the agency that is responsible for that. So what will I say for another person's failure? I want to talk about online banking because you have moved within a short while offline banking into online banking. All the bank apps are crashing. Online banks are crashing Nigeria in the last one week. You take it, the money keeps hanging from one week from two weeks, it doesn't drop. Today in the bank I want to say this is only their own bank they can transfer to. You can't move your money to another bank. You can't go online banking. You don't allow the system to crash because it's taking all the money that it's supposed to take. It wouldn't be so good an advance economy to a company like China and the United States. They are still using cash trading. Okay. Let's talk about... Let's talk about the fact that three APC states have sued the federal government over the scarcity of new Naira nodes and many more people are still pushing for an extension of the dates. Mr. President's party members saying that this particular move is targeted at them and the presidential candidate but generally looking at the situation of things and also as an analyst what do you see all of this going knowing that we are just 18 days away from elections kicking off in earnest and what do we really go from here and also come up to say let's give him seven days and he's going to turn things around. Is Mr. President's words anything that we can go by? What the party members should do is they are fighting both sides to ensure that the limit the draw a limit that was made by the city and it's obeyed by the commercial banks and even by the city and the states because today we got to do and this is the so-called big way to have access to this thing we also need to get back to the Christmas what if we were forced to leave Naira nodes and bond nodes, if we were able to see the campaign and the poor man cannot even access his own money so there should have had three clings to the limit the first to the draw a limit because if I just choose to draw a limit then the second cannot actually have access to that cash and there should not be people to have more to do account so sooner they will draw like that and then they can call the technology agencies to track them off so in that way you can figure out both sides so I need to say you want to achieve that the other money the old money was not technology so what do you say, how can you do that are we giving the bank prices or the money the bank prices are saying they don't have cash they say we don't have cash they say we don't have cash they don't have cash and the Fed is too close because CBA is a regulator and they land the hammer grant said there are some other bank managers that are trading on the card so when you open those words where you do not have anybody trading on it because you want to do what is available this way you don't have to have to label that is creating like a clarity so CBA should make it available and stop all these nonsense and go back to the bank bank and say, we saw something wrong, we don't see something wrong. It's a rival of the world we are in this universe that I can tell you too. We also saw that the EFCC arrested a certain bank operations manager from us, you know, and what we see is that there's no name for the bank manager. We do not know what bank it was. But then many have queried the CBN and the motive, if you really want to deal with this situation as you say that these people are hurting this money, why hide their names and the name of the banks that they are operating in, why don't you make it public so that it would be a name and shaming thing and so that every other bank, as they say, who is holding these monies would do the needful as opposed to just saying Mr. Nobody was caught at Mr. Nobody's bank. I mean, how serious do you think the CBN is dealing with these so-called banks that are holding onto monies and not dispensing them to the public? We should also change the shadows that need to be solved first. Some stances, by this time last month, nobody was buying off Naira notes. By this time two months ago, nobody was buying Naira notes. Or three months ago, nobody was like a carry on Naira notes. It is because of that access that is properly solved then. So deal with the root cause of the problem and solve the CBN shadows. CBN is changing shadows. When Naira is available, nobody will be raking out with things. Okay. So what are you, you are treating the signal, you are treating some stuff. That's what we call root cause analysis. The root cause analysis of this is that you meet anybody that cannot go around the world with a criticism to start for them, for their economy. And because it will start, it will be more than, and it will be changing. These COS people that are selling monies, because they don't have money, they were collecting for one, ten thousand. When the money was available, nobody asked you for money, when you go to bank, before now, when the bank is telling you that they don't have those people now, it's because of the scarcity. So that's the root cause. All right. So when you meet the people that are selling more, and there's so much scarcity, nobody will hold the money, nobody will sell the monies, and nobody will rake out with Naira. Well, we live in very interesting times where Naira is being bought by Naira. Well, I want to say thank you. Ambrose Bokeh is a public affairs analyst. We're hoping that we're looking forward to better days. Hopefully this eases off before Election Day, but we'll keep our fingers crossed. Thank you so much, Ambrose, for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right. Well, we'll take a quick break. Thank you for staying with us. When we come back, we'll be discussing Dogara's comments on the North completing 14 years to meet up with the South. We'll be having our guests join us right after this break. Stay with us.