 Alright, thanks for staying with us now. The World Bank has warned that the newly redesigned Naira, which went into circulation, recently may have negative effect on economic activities, especially poor Nigerians due to its timing and short transition period. The Washington-based bank revealed this in a new report titled Nigeria Development Update. This came amid the mixed reactions that have been trailing the newly redesigned notes. The Central Bank of Nigeria unveiled the new 1,500 and 200 notes as part of the measures to mop up excess cash in circulation, ran some payments for kidnapping, terrorism, financing, counterfeiting, and amongst other things. The World Bank, in its report, however, said that the new policy would negatively affect small businesses, especially those who day-to-day cash transactions deal with day-to-day cash transactions. So what are your thoughts on this? Do you think the Naira redesign is helping hurting the poor? Please let us hear what you have to say. Remember, you can join the conversation, send us an SMS or WhatsApp to do it. We can also tweet at us at Weisho AFKOU on the hashtag Weisho. So I'll bring Incheonasa in a minute, but I just wanted to hear your thoughts. Deola and Jennifer, what are your thoughts? Do you think this redesign would help to hurt especially these people in the streets? So today I had an episode. I was just doing an experiment. I wanted to... I've never bought things in traffic, never. But I decided, you know what, let me try these traffic vendors. So I said, okay, let me buy this power charger, right? So I asked him, do you have a charger? He brought the charger and everything. So when I was about to pay, I said, do you want to take the new note or you want the old note? And he goes, ah, any note will you give me, you know? I was not worried, telling him that. Are you not worried that the old note, you will not be able to use it if you collected the old note from me? He said, madam, money and money, as far as you pay me my money complete, I will collect the money. So it just got me a bit worried that if the CBN is going to stop these notes in circulation from 31st of January, how do these... Because again, most of these businesses, really, that would be really impacted, they deal mainly in cash transactions, right? They are on the streets, you know, they are the, you know, the people circulate and they say cash flow structure that they work with. So how do you think this will help? Would it help or to hurt them? So for me, I think I'll come from what I've seen in the news recently. To be honest, this is my first time holding these new notes. And I mean, it's interesting to see and we've seen a lot of complaints about it in the news. And I saw today that the purest operators are also complaining. They interviewed some purest operators in Abuja. And what they're saying is that they actually charge people a whole lot more when they ask to dispense the new Naira notes. So they charge you 200 to 2000 Naira. If you're withdrawing 5000 Naira, they will charge you 500 Naira. As opposed to probably the 100 Naira they used to charge before. And then one of the complaints that they made was that when they go to the bank to get the new Naira notes, their fans were only giving them 5000 Naira new notes. So basically they come back and if as a citizen you go to them and you want to actually collect money and you tell them it's the new Naira notes that you want because a lot of people are rushing to actually get new Naira because they don't want to still be in possession of the old notes. So when you get there, they only give you limited amounts. And what he tells them is that one of the guys, one of the purest operators says that he tells the people who are coming to him that you should only withdraw the amount you want to use now because he can't give you a lot of it. And even if he's giving you a certain amount, he's going to charge you more. But that is wickedness and being exploitative because the bank that they collected so even if the bank is giving them a minimal amount of money, the bank has not charged them extra to give them that money. So why are you charging them? So they are basically just exploiting all that people. That's exploitative for it. You know some of these purest people are in the market. So just imagine a market woman who needs cash would go to the guy, okay, I need to collect $5,000 or $10,000. Yes. So you're taking more than she bargained for and it's not going to help her because at the end of the day, by the time she goes home and she calculates how much she has made for the day, she has eaten into her profit. Let me hear your thoughts. Okay, so I think it's going to hurt them. It's not in doubt that the police is good. But if you want to effect policies, especially when you're dealing with all the demography of people, you need to understand that the campaign has to be in such a way that you're able to reach all these users. Now for a lot of all these grassroot people, first of all they don't even understand what this redesign is about. They are not concerned about counterfeiting or all that. They don't know that. For them it's just, I just want to trade. So when you take that, nobody is going to explain anything to them. So first of all, there is the fear of, oh, I don't even want to take this new note because it might be fake. They have that. I have experienced that. I went to the market and I said, oh, I have new notes and the woman just said to me, I don't want it. I don't want this new note because you people, that's what she said and that means you these educated people, you people have come again. So we must be able, I think we must think of these people in the markets, in remote areas on the streets who have no access to the education that well the elite or the supposed people in a band places would have to understand oh, okay, this policy in the long run might be good for all of us. But I mean, day to day trade, these people, they bank on what they make in the market to feed their families. So when they are unable to meet that demand, then it becomes something else. There's more menace in the society. It just spirals out of control, really. It's interesting. I hear you say that there's a big gap in communication. But let me bring in our guest. She is a strategic communications and advocacy specialist with a career spanning over 14 years across the financial services, professional services and development sector. She currently works at Africa Practice, a Pan-African mission-led consultancy where she specifically heads the inclusion for all and advocacy initiative that seeks to use data, evidence to deepen the knowledge and understanding of barriers that keeps the vulnerable population in Nigeria excluded from formal financial services. And she's joined us live in studio. She is a friend of the house. If you know, you know. If you do not know, you do not know. Hi, Nasa. How are you doing? First of all, you look amazing, by the way. Thank you for joining us this evening. Thank you very much. So, I mean, Nasa, this conversation, we've had it in different quarters. A lot of people are actually talking about the Nairie design, how it's going to affect a lot of things. But people really, in my opinion, I think there's a huge demography, like Deela had put it, that there were no paying attention to. And these people really do not know that 31st is 31st because the Sibian governor is not bulging. He's saying that whether you like it or not, but the 31st, that note would be obsolete, your old Nairie notes. But these people deal with petty trade. They deal with every day. They deal with cash every day. So how, first of all, what do you think this policy the redesigning? Do you think it's helping the poor or hurting the poor? Then you now tell us what do you think should be the better idea to go about it? So to answer that question directly, and thank you very much, Owa, the reason that we, first of all, ask whether it's helping or hurting the poor is because there's two sides to this policy. And as Deela mentioned, we see the positive side of the policy. We understand what it seeks to achieve, which for us is actually a step in the right direction, like I keep saying, because it's headed towards cashless economy and which is what we advocate for, how we can get the excluded populations into formal financial services. However, the approach that has been taken more from a process standpoint and timelines is what we are concerned about it and which is why we're concerned about. It's hurting the poor because it looks like it would push them further out of formality, which is basically exclusion. So the objective that the CBN is trying to achieve, which is positive and they're trying to do the right thing, is probably going to be counterproductive eventually just because the right process wasn't adopted. So in terms of what I think, right, so at Inclusion for All, we first of all use data to establish why this is really a problem. So if you look at it from that perspective to say that first of all, is there a huge population of these people that we care about? Yes, there's a significant number of them. So from Athena's data in 2020, that's the access to finance survey reports, there was well over 38 million on banks that live below the poverty line. And so that's about 45% of the entire on-banks adult population in Nigeria. That's at 2020. Now these people from our own data breakdown and analysis are probably living in rural communities and they're probably even female. Now if you look at the dates, the recent multi-dimensional poverty data from MBS of the poor population, about 133 of them, 106 billion of them live in rural communities, right? So again, there's a huge population of these people. So CBN has designed a policy which in truth seeks to strengthen the financial services and the economy in the long term, right? But the timeline in which they're doing it is what is causing the issues and that's what everybody is clamoring for. Can we consider a longer timeline so that this doesn't actually disproportionately affect the people in the grassroots? So aside a longer timeline, what do you think should have been the best approach for CBN to take concerning this? I think to start with, I think the timeline is the most... is the major issue with this. In terms of other approaches and just looking at the groups that we care about and the recent introduction or the launch of the cash flow program, because part of what we would suggest is before you design your policy, you have to think about, as Deola mentioned, all the different demographics, right? And so do you want to... you have to probably design approaches tailored to those different groups? And that's what they're essentially doing now with this program. It's a targeted solution. It's targeting the rural communities but in the time that they're doing it because there's an incongruence with the agent network that they're leveraging, the size of the population of these people and some of the requirements. So there's all these different gaps that haven't come together. So whilst the approach is targeted and it makes sense, it's still not been done properly just because certain things are not in place, they have a longer timeline so that you can do the right thing. So speaking to sensitization, letting people actually get educated about what this is. I think it was what I mentioned earlier that even people in urban locations don't have the correct information. So imagine someone in a hard-to-reach community with the poor infrastructure. They don't have the connectivity or the network or all the things that we have access to to have this information. So in terms of approach, this is the timeline. Other things they seem to be thinking of which we're seeing by way of the launch of the cash flow program. So yeah. OK, Jola, I'll let you come in. But you see, just to touch on this timeline because the conversation we had yesterday was around this and a lot of people called into the show and they were saying that Nigerians have a passion. That's the word. You know, waiting. So that's even if they gave us 10 years. Do you understand? Nigerians will still wait until the 10th year, the 365th day of that 10th year to go to the bank to swap this money. So some callers actually called and said no, they're actually in strong support with CBN and the timeline, given that what we do with NINs and all of those things, you wait till the deadline before you go and submit it. So do you really think it is the timeline that is the major crux of this issue? It's the timeline and I hear what they're saying and in truth, yes, Nigerians have a behavioral pattern that shows and over time our policy makers have understood that this is how Nigerians are. So yes, we're not actually we don't have a problem with the aggressive policy stance. It's just again, you need time to do certain things. So it could have been six months. Which in other claims, I think in the UK it takes about two years for you to do this sort of thing. We need it two years. But six weeks is not a lot of time because you have a lot of gaps. There are still people that don't understand you need to educate people. They don't have that literacy level. There's so many different parts that need to be fixed. That's why again we can't say it's not a timeline issue but I understand what they're saying. So some of those, some, Nigeria needs those policies, aggressive policy stance just so that things can move. And it's what we've seen over time, even with the NINs people kept getting, I mean that went on for over a year, right? There was a lot of sensitization. But even on 4th of April, there were still a lot of people that, so from that kind of perspective you see why the policy makers would take this sort of approach. But what we're saying in this particular instance is it's significantly short. It's a very short, I mean it was October that it was announced and then the money didn't come in circulation until December 15. So between December 15 and January, are you cheating? It's still not in circulation. People are still withdrawing old notes from December 15 up to January and still withdrawing the old notes. Let me let Jiala come in. Okay, so I think I want to ask about the role of the banks now in terms of distribution. I mean there is obviously a gap. CBN is saying there's a lot of distribution. We've drawn our part. But the banks are saying okay, you know what we don't have or maybe they have and they're selective about who they give. But at the same time I also want to, you know, dovetail it into POS agents. Now these are people operating at grassroot level. So you find that the average Yarisika who probably is not included in financial services can easily well maybe on the average say okay you know what, at least I can still do my financial transactions through a POS. So my question is if the CBN keeps about the cashless policy which is good have they put in measures to address the increasing amount of frauds and scams that would happen? Because that is going to happen. Somebody somewhere is going to rip off some uneducated woman because she doesn't know better. You know, again this is I know it's moving a little bit outside of, you know, Naira but again at the end of the day it's still the same thing because these women will feel okay. Somebody can bring your cash let me help you to go and check in. Exactly. I can't lose this sale today. Let me just quickly go and again you will sense the desperation in them to just make a sale in a day just to feed their own household. So I suspect or I, not that I even suspect I've seen it happen so many times where they are helpless. So a lot of them will get robbed a lot of them would lose their means of livelihood. Like you said this timeline, I don't know, is CBN listening? I mean are people really deliberating with CBN to say this can't happen. You have to understand all the gaps that this, you know, presents. Alright Naira, I'll let you come in to answer that question but let's quickly go on a very short break. When we come back from the break we'll continue the conversation. Stay with us. Thanks for staying with us. Now if you just tuned in we're discussing the topic Naira, design helping or hurting the poor and we have with us Chinasa Collins Obu and remember you can join the conversation send us an SMS or WhatsApp to the red one 803-4663, you can also tweet at us at Weissho, Africa One with the hashtag Weissho. So Jella had asked you about how is impacting, you know, and how what measures of policies that CBN put in place to even help because what she said is true. I might go and meet the mama in the village that doesn't do anything but the son always gives her money and I know that she probably always keeps cashing the house for you know, different household things she wants to buy. Mama, let me help you take your money. Things like that might happen, right? So I didn't measure in place, you know, what's inclusion for her doing to help because you people are actually targeted at helping the people, you know, that cannot be served, right, underserved and you know, so what can be done? Okay, so from a CBN perspective in terms of measures that they have in place, I would say that maybe nothing specific to this particular issue but then I think leveraging the consumer protection department of the CBN, this is why they exist and so as more of these sort of issues get reported then they can start to document and then start to map out an approach or a response or, you know, a way of addressing these particular issues and I guess as with every policy that comes out they learn as they go and design solutions to them from our side as inclusion for all our role is to represent the voice of the poor and the marginalized communities and what that basically means is that we're not just speaking out of passion, we're also speaking from facts, from data so it's not us saying that oh we're just really sad that these people are going to be hurt, it's data actually shows us and that this is why you should be concerned and why you should take this into consideration so if we know that there are 38 million on banked and they're poor and we know that in terms of their behavior, their savings behavior they prefer to save in cash, right and the reasons for that is also first of all proximity that's the highest of the top four reasons, proximity then there's we earn a daily income then I don't have a job and it's too expensive and there's trust so all these issues that's why they don't save so if you start to look at it from that perspective understanding their nuanced challenges then you want to be sure that in whatever policy you're designing are you taking those into consideration also factoring in the timeline that you'll take to solve or overcome those barriers because that's essentially what those things are the barriers to their inclusion and when you make this sort of policy decision it's like you're creating more barriers so I was just going to say because again we were talking in the makeup room about how these people actually trust so what is the difference between these agile women and I see a lot of them do it the women you know the question already asked but I don't even fear this woman they can collect all your money and it's like that person is untouched everybody knows that she goes around to collect 5,500, 1,000 Naira from these people none of those area boys attacks her the money is always there so this is what I'm saying so how come they've been able to build that trust system do you understand because they trust those people holding their daily cash than banks is it because of those small charges banks have even taken off all those charges as well or is there hidden charges well there are hidden charges so from the standpoint in terms of why there's that trust I think it's just like a family so if you have a community where you know one another and you know that somebody is your friend's mother that person and you see them or you see a family member the bank is far from them they don't even know these people somebody comes to tell why am I supposed to trust you then I'm now here for my friend like the one that was on social media that's how I put 600,000 in that bank they came to tell to us who and you now come back and tell them that the shopping bank nobody will answer you word of mouth strives and so that if my next door neighbor let me just go to Taufik if he doesn't give me money I'll report to his mother do you understand so that's part of what the financial service providers need to also start looking at how do we build trust and so in this narrow redesign regime that's what we're also saying that there's so many behavioral issues and it's not, see Lagos is different from Sokoto their behavioral patterns their psychographics is so different that applies in Lagos that's why we talk about targeted solutions and targeted policies thinking of all these different parts of this whole system and how do we create something that is all encompassing you know I have one more thing I wanted to say but I don't know then if I pardon me so why are beggars because I took a story that beggars were rejecting old Naira nuts so now two things for me that the beggars the beggars are rejecting old Naira nuts but somebody that was buying commodity from that is your business beggars is free money because if you beg me and I give you money, it's free money for them but you, are you not afraid of losing your capital because if I buy something from you definitely you would lose part of your capital if you're not able to use that currency so I'm wondering where is the disconnect because beggars that are they seem to be a lot more enlightened to know that these old these old nuts will no longer be useful to me so I am rejecting it so I wanted to test it to give beggars 200 Naira nuts or 200 Naira nuts there's a reason why they're enlightened that's what I'm asking they're organized so the thing is even with the beggars that you see they have heads and these people are educated giving them targets if you go because I mean if they send out 20 beggars on the streets and they all come back with the old Naira nuts and by the time is January 31st what would they do with the money so at the end of the day they are going to make a loss so they would have told them see as you're going out today for your market to call with the Naira nuts you have to come in with the new Naira nuts and there's nothing anybody can do about it they beg a boat madame it's new it begs a harsh choice but Nasa I mean go ahead 24 it is well I am in shock besides that you were talking about the market women who give their money to Agile Nasa already explained all of that and I think another thing is the fact that they want to leave their businesses to enter the banks to queue we know how long it takes there are some certain banks these are the banks they call bank for the people because you find a lot of people there are a lot of young people old people because I think they've done a lot of sensitization or there are sales people who have actually gone there sales people who are working but if you go there on a normal day it is filled to the brim sometime I've seen these banks where people seal the door so you don't expect a market woman who is trying to because her head why she's there and she's wasting time trying to deposit maybe 5K that she made that day or 10,000 that she made that day she's thinking about oh I'm sure I would have made 500 Naira now by this time or somebody would have come to my store to buy something and a lot of them don't want to close their shop especially those who don't have sales girls or sales boys that are assisting them or even their kids that are assisting them nobody wants to go to the bank so if someone is coming around and say give me your money I will help you save it you will just freely give it to them sales time that's a valid point that you make and it's so true and that's something that we also identified with the reason why a lot of people in the rural communities especially the females don't have the NIN so it's this process that is always designed without support in mind because they just assume everybody is in Lagos so first of all as a woman in the north I probably need to get permission from my husband before I can go and do certain things so it takes me time to get that permission I have a business that I'm running I'm the one looking I'm the caregiver so I'm looking after the kids in the house so you see I don't have a lot of time to spend doing something that does not translate to direct money for me because I earn a daily income so there's only time is truly money I take the trip to Q I hope I'm going to get what I'm after in sensible time because I have a business to go back to so it's an actual problem so that if I can't do it then I'm just going to forget about it because nobody is giving me money I have a family to feed I have a family to look after and I have permission to get for my husband he may not allow me the second time I mean talking about cash and people who save I'll call it manually I mean you're not going to the bank to put this money there are people who have Kolo piggy bank so is this the point where they break they have to because now you have to break it and then take all the old Nair notes go to the bank collect new Nair notes and then buy a new piggy bank or new Kolo better solution for I'm really concerned about this these daily earners and cash people don't you think the banks are lazy a bit because I mean you said something just now when it's time to open account banks send out AGE I don't get solution for them but they need to pay me for it you send in aggressive marketing to get those accounts opened but when it comes to the services I've seen the people that have decided to open the account your hearts are fine I've been trying to reach my account officer now I've not been able to find account officer because I need statement to be able to pay government their tax so don't you think the banks are a bit lazy in helping this poor and underserved to at least make them feel the matter they're important good question so first of all you have to understand that the bank is a business and so if it doesn't make economic sense for them if it's not profitable then they're unlikely to focus on that so whilst we can wear our empath hearts and be like oh but do you not care about these people it's about how much time do I have to expend in servicing these groups of people versus the amount of time I spend on a more profitable segment and what I get out of it so which has always been the conversation around financial inclusion banks don't find those segments attractive are you sure? diamond bank they buried them now so I can call their name they saw that market when no one was looking at that direction they went into that market because they understood that mass market was the market and diamond bank went with aggression they started bringing in the numbers so a lot of these banks that were big boy banks and what was diamond bank doing right that they were not doing right they now started to copy but by then it was too late because diamond bank had mopped up the entire mass market cash so I don't believe that it is not profitable because go ahead it's not profitable but how much of your resources do you have to put us to get that amount and you have to understand that diamond bank had a very strong retail strategy that was their focus so it made sense for them to pursue people in that segment other banks didn't have that kind of strategy and when you say profitable again over what period in my banking career early before diamond bank even started financial inclusion or whatever Stambick had gone into that market and one of the things that we realised very quickly trying to bank the low income segment was that the bank wasn't ready for it because it was it's a loss leading segment to start with because you have to put in a lot of investment and you have to be able to reach them because you have to think of the infrastructural gaps you have to think of so many things so it costs a lot and then by the time you look at making so yes they're strengthening their numbers and if you're patient enough yes it'll be profitable so not that it isn't profitable but in what time frame and do they have the patience when you measure what the inputs are and the output okay so well this is not a question it's just an observation micro-MSMEs and all that I mean let's now say that they're all coming to the use of financial services and everybody is trying to do the transfers and what not trying to get their business and all I'm hoping that the banks they have the infrastructure to deal with the volume of transactions that would be coming through exactly because if we're going to have problems where the market people or the MSMEs are unable to verify payments they stand to lose quite a whole lot and I just hope and that makes this whole thing this cashless policy not attractive for them it's going to be a hard sell because they're going to tell you listen I'm losing money daily I can't do these I hear what she's saying because again what we also believe is that there's so many different parts of the ecosystem and the people playing different roles and how ready are those different parts so there's a readiness challenge which is again where we keep speaking to timelines so what you're trying to do is a bad thing but have you done like an audit to understand how ready they are for this change that you're introducing into the markets how ready the banks to service these people digitally how ready are your agents to open accounts for these people do they have the capacity building for them to be able to open accounts in record time do the different groups of people do they have the required documentation to even fulfill some of the objectives that you have so yes there's an ecosystem readiness assessment that in terms of approach that maybe should have been done like how ready are all these different parts before we go into the market with this but CBN has their reasons Can you paint a picture what 31st of January would look like in a parking house let me tell them it's not because and just more because again people have started to set their own personal deadlines so people stopped collecting old notes as at last week I was in the cab with some guy and he says the filling station wouldn't allow him pay with cash because they were not collecting old notes and I think to myself this is you in Lagos and he had the option of paying with his card right so he was out of that situation so what happens to Yairisika in somewhere in Issey or something and she doesn't have her card and then she has to pay like first of all she'll almost go crazy like what's going on 31st again we don't know why the CBN is insisting that this deadline holds but from what I'm hearing even from within the urban locations people are just not ready how much more people in her to reach communities and the cash swap program has not been given the time to actually as effective as it can be more so I hear so like I said there's the gap in terms of agent availability or coverage but then CBN is also selecting agents so it's not all agents so I understand that Abuja and Lagos agents are exempt I assume that's because they don't believe that there's a huge rural population that requires this sort of service I know so those are the things that make me wonder if I mean by 31st how many people would have been reached and what happens in the banks even the banks would probably just shut down and say I don't let's take cover alright so we have a comment here good evening my dear beautiful sisters of what are you saying ways Naira redesigned helping or hurting the poor it is definitely hurting the poor because the poor cannot gain access to it my dear beautiful sister Ajela made mention of some market women rejecting the new notes simply because they are not sure of it if it is fake or not I think there should be an awareness whereby these people should be explained to and educate them how to differentiate the fake notes from the real ones also the time frame is important and I insist that the deadline should be extended because it is too short three boosters for my dear beautiful sister Chinelou she did a very good job anchoring the show yesterday my name is Daniel Ilu way is regular fan thank you Daniel Naira design is not helping the poor but rather hurting because there was not enough time to educate the poor masses secondly I thought the Naira redesign was meant to uplift the quality of Naira in circulation that was very dirty to behold in fact the new Naira redesign is even less in quality than the ones that they want to put in they want to put out circulation for me the redesign was just in color and nothing else we Nigerians are very wicked to ourselves the redesign looks like it is after some people are not for the whole interest of all Nigerian people I thought the redesign Naira would be in circulation together with the old ones then with time the old ones will gradually go out of circulation the United States of America has their new $100 bill notes in circulation together with their old $100 bill their old $100 did did not cease to serve as their legal tender just because they printed new $100 bills in Nigeria we want people to go through hell just because you want to make a point Sanctus on that note Nasa in one word are you hopeful do you think I'm hopeful even in spite of hearing the CBN governor say nothing is changing there's no compelling reason to change the deadline I think that if maybe he'll wear his empath hat and see that this is affecting the grassroots and let's do something about it I know I said two weeks maybe that's not enough but let's start from there thank you so much Ginasa you've been an amazing guest thank you Diola, thank you Jennifer now before we go and show you follow us remember to like, share, invite your friends to watch and follow the conversation now if you missed a quote for the day here it is again if I had to run a company on three measures those measures would be customer satisfaction employee satisfaction and cash flow so cash flow very very important we'll see you guys live on Monday bring another great conversation to your screen enjoy