 You're welcome back. President Mohamed Abouhari laid concerns over the central bank of Nigeria, Kashwap and the Naira redesign project, promising Nigerians that the Apex Bank was doing everything necessary to ensure that their businesses are not hurt. Despite the unprecedented pressure being put on the president by some state governors, politicians and lawmakers, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who threatened to arrest the CBN governor, Godwin Mephile, the president promised Nigerians that the central bank, commercial banks and other stakeholders were doing everything necessary to ensure that the entire supply chain does not experience disruption arising from the currency swap policy. President Bouhari on Sunday in Daurak had seen a state approved a 10-day extension of the deadline for the swapping of the currency to new nodes. Now, we're being joined by Muiwa Dixon, who will be talking extensively about this. Good morning and welcome to the program, Muiwa. Good morning. Okay, we're just wondering, if Mephile has said that there's enough currency to go around, we are hearing this same thing just like it happened in the fuel, that there's enough fuel we are still having scarcity. And we're wondering, in the central bank of Nigeria, having printed all the money that we will need to swap, why do you think there's still a shortage of these new Naira nodes? I think one thing is very particular about Nigeria from time is the distance between policy making and fulfillment of manifestation of those policies. So most times when we talk about, when we do things in Nigeria, we talk more of records. So the CBMI said there are printed resources and so there should be that money everywhere. But when we look at, where does this money goes? Is it going to the bank or going to those people that are concerned? Because even as at this morning, I was at the bank with one of my workers and depositors don't know. So we're not able to even get the new nodes from the bank. Even the ATMs were not dispensing that it should be. So I believe it's between government policies making and the execution of those policies. There's always a very big gap when we look at it. What is the unique thing that we need to understand about this CBN's cashless policy by the way? Because some people are not even seeing the cashless policy. They are seeing politics inside whatever policy they have brought. Some people are thinking that it is a witch hunt on some politicians that might want to flaunt money at this election time. But the main thing, the main reason that was given to us was that CBN wants to implement a cashless policy and mop up the whole money that is in the hands of people and not in the banking bank vaults, so to speak. So help us understand some of the things that we need to know about this cashless policy of the CBN. Muyua, are you there? We seem to have lost connection with Muyua. As soon as he returns, we are going to continue with this topic. We're talking about CBN's cashless policy. But as we wait for the CBN's cashless policy discussion with Muyua, Bayo, you're still there, right? Maybe we'll just have a small revisit on what we discussed with Tunji earlier on about the BVAS. And he asked a critical question, which I'm also wondering now. Bayo, are you there? Yes, I'm here. This BVAS, okay, let me just give you a funny experience. At what point I lost about a 1,500 Naira on my BRT card, Kauri card. And when I asked them how that could happen, the only explanation they gave to me was that maybe at some point I was tapping the card and BRT was giving me opportunity to take a ride when there was no money in my card. And I couldn't wrap my head around it. I didn't understand it. But what I saw was that the people themselves did not even understand it in the first place. Now, a lot of questions come to mind when we talk about BVAS and the fact that there was overvoting. But let's leave the matter now. I understand that Muiwa is back. Muiwa, we're asking to understand what that unique thing about this CBN cashless policy is that we may not be understanding right now. Because a lot of people, like I said earlier, are just tying the money, the redesigning of the Naira nodes to politics. So help us understand what this cashless policy is. Yeah, the cashless one of the CBN is quite different from the political view of it. People are just thinking the redesigning of the Naira is the world's general election. But I believe it's something that should have been done even before now. Oftentimes cashless policy makes transactions easy. What I mean easy is that you don't have the fact of moving cash. And even from the time we've been doing cashless policies for a lot of things, let's look at major transactions. But we have to bring it to the market to human level, to the informal sector level. And I think that's what CBN is trying to achieve. Because in the formal sector, a lot of cashless transaction has been going on. But it is at the same time, the CBN wants us to take it down to the informal sector, which has been left out of the cashless policy for a long time. And this has been happening in a lot of countries. Let's take Kenya, for example. They've been achieving a lot when it comes to the era of cashless policy. So it's something that we need to do. It will be a good thing on the part of the government and even on the part of the citizens. So it's something that should go around. So I guess the CBN is trying to focus more on the informal sector to see how they can now bring them on board on the cashless policy affairs. Well, Bio, over to you. Yeah. The, the, this point you raised, we were very interesting because the central bank governor did mention that over a trillion Naira has now been brought into the banking system. And that there's still 900 billion outside of the system in their own estimation. And at the extension to the period within which we needed to exchange of your own Naira notes is actually to try to capture a part of all of the 900 billion that is still outside of the system. But what, what, what is interesting about this statement is that he mentioned that as an aside, he didn't really focus on that. He didn't really dwell on the achievements so far of this policy. Okay. We tonight might now make people to continue to think that it is rather targeted at politicians. You know, there's also the question of terrorism financing and those who have been kidnapping people and asking for ransom to be paid. And somebody was actually remarking to me yesterday that within this period, it did, it did appear as if kidnapping had reduced within this period of this exchange of your Naira for new notes. Do you think the CBN has articulated its message clearly to Nigerians? Has it been able to explain clearly why this policy has been done? And what does it need to do more within this period that is left to explain properly to people for if you think it doesn't explain properly. And if you think it has, I mean, it would be nice to have your perspective. I believe the CBN cashless policy is really working in the, especially in the area of insecurity, the kidnapping as well as we do. Though we still have even recently over the weekend, we still have some cases everywhere. And that will help a lot because if we look at what the CBN is doing in the area of bringing in the old notes, people are scared of taking their money from sources that are not genuine as scared of taking those monies to the bank. So I guess that has reduced a lot. And even Mamrebe and other sort of crimes that we used radically within the last two months, I agree with you quite on that. So the areas I think the CBN needs to do is in the area of network, the networking part of it needs to be improved. Like on Sunday, that was yesterday when everybody was going to bank and people were trying to do different forms of transaction. We noticed that the network was a bit jam-packed and we could not have, we just have jamming of network everyone there. Even the bank apps were not working as it should be. So that is where we need to prepare well for the cashless transaction because we are talking about a bulk of money, you are bringing in a lot of people on board. I'll tell you the cashless policy, this old notes we're designing has made a lot of people. You even look at some of our women, I believe when the CBN said we still have over 90 billion or so outside our year to be captured because we saw people bringing in cash, even some old women around because I deal with some informal services, the way they were bringing their cash to the bank, all they just want to do is please get this money to the bank. And a lot of people, you see people that are on bank. So that's why you even know that in this generation, there are some people selling and they are making good turnover, but they are yet to be banked. So those are areas that I think we need to improve on the network part of it. So that's one. Then other things we need to do is we also look at what are the fears of these people? Why are they not bringing their money to the bank? I think CBN also need to consider that apart from those that are getting their money from engineer news sources, but there are some people that are doing legitimate business that also want to bank. But let's look at what is happening all around us now. The inflation has affected a lot of goods. So those in the buyer and selling part, they get less than the profit they were getting before. So if you ask these people to bring their money to the bank, what they are complaining more is transaction charges. So okay, let me give you a scenario. In a shop where somebody sells a good for 10,000 Naira and it makes a profit of maybe 150 or 200 Naira. And when they make a transfer to that person, the bank deducts 15 Naira for stand duty, then even some other transaction, even when you are withdrawing the money you pay charges, at the end of the day, it's called a 200 Naira profit that has been reduced to 19 Naira, which can no longer fund the business. It goes on and on like that. So if we want everybody to join in this cashless for you, we have to look at the transaction charges. After networking, we have to look at this transaction charges. What does it cost these people? So a lot of people do not want to deal with the bank because they believe the bank is just out there to keep deducting their money. So those are the things we need to also share. So the issue of the network is a very good point. I mean all the points you made are very good points. I'm just wondering whether our network providers or the internet service providers, ISPs, whether they are on board on this because they are the ones actually who really have to now ensure that there's sufficient bandwidth that can accommodate all these new people that are coming into the network. If you remember during COVID, when we started having meetings online, many of the traditional online platforms for holding meetings were not sufficiently capable at the beginning. I don't want to mention names. They were not sufficiently capable because suddenly we had so many people coming into the network, so many meetings all over the world, but then later on this was corrected. But for the CBN cashless policy, it does not look like the internet service providers and other providers of network bandwidth have been carried along and I really don't know what can be done within this window that is left before it closes. We have maybe two weeks more, right, before it closes. Is that period sufficient to improve the bandwidth, the internet bandwidth, to be able to cope with this huge number of potential bankers, sorry, bank customers that are joining the system? The window is actually what the bank needs to improve is the banks themselves, they are not prepared for what is coming. The internet itself is ready, they have the bandwidth, especially where they have forges around to work, but you know, when you let's look at the capacity of the system itself, what can the bank hold onto like, okay, normally they have about let's say 20 million customers by their own average, they believe, okay, maybe every day you have about one million transactions on a half, so they are just prepared for that. So, but by the time a lot of people start logging in, trying to get information from the last site, it becomes a problem for them to handle. So they also, the banks, the banks also need to be prepared. And when we look at it, if for big transactions, you can look at the bank, I think that is the area where the banks are, this is a small concept, it's an internal system within the bank, they need to work more on it, then work more, okay, also with the network providers and how they can improve on the U.S.S.D., because it's easier, the people that does smaller transactions, the numbers, they are more than those that does bulk transactions. So for bulk transactions, they can which. So let's look at how can, okay, let's look at current, why we have so much attention on the new design, the new design is because even when we look at the current swell hike that is happening all around the country, you see that the cost of transportation and smaller units have gone up. So for example, a bus stop that has been maybe for example 100 nera has not gone to 200, 500, and that means you have to pay with denominations like 200, 500, and 1000. So there's more tension, there's more pressure on the notes that are higher than 100 nera. So imagine if I have to pay, possibly we have bus stops now that are about 1000, 1500. So if I have to pay now, then that means I have to use the notes that are equivalent in that to not make sense for me, even for the conductor that you are paying with 50, 50 nera, you want to pay about 1000 nera, like about 20 passengers to attend to at the same time, that's going to create a problem. So the current increase in swell hike is also part of those things that have contributed to it. So we should design a system, okay, how can we use VSSG to pay for buses? So when we start thinking like that, then we know we are approaching the cashless, because even transportation is things, if you look at the cash transaction that goes around transportation in a day, it's mushed. So we have to start thinking in that regard. So everybody concerned, even the CBN needs to look at how can the simplest process of this be brought into the cashless policy efficient that they are making. So let's look at, let's begin work towards how can we make people pay for bus fare using the cashless. If we start thinking that way, I think we have more idea of what is coming. Okay. All right. Mu Yua would like to say thank you to you for coming. Mu Yua Dixon is the GM, a key investment hub. Thank you so much for being a part of our program this morning. Thank you very much. It's a privilege for being part of the program this morning. Okay. Well, Bayo, we have a lot of things to discuss after the news, but right now let's just take that news break. And when we return, we'll look at some of the points that both Mu Yua and Tunji had made in the course of the show. Stay with us.