 Okay so this is one of the many protests that have been going on and it's gone viral across all social media platforms showing irate Nigerians who are clearly at the brink of losing it right with the non-ending cues of to access um one's hard-earned money coupled with the height price of fuel and transportation it is clear that this scarcity is having such a negative impact on us as Nigerians now Nigerians across the country are agitated the situation seems to be getting worse and yet no aid seemed to be in sight now we cannot stop talking about this and we cannot continue this way and that's why we're asking what is the way forward right please let's hear what you have same but you can join the conversation send us an sms or whatsapp to the red one 803-4663 can also twitter does that way show after one of the hashtag way show so i have had this conversation right up from tuesday up until yesterday you know thankfully both all three of you are not on set i would like to first of all hear how this is affecting you then how i mean what might be far away in the uk and i'm very sure this is also impacting her you know a lot of people she um her phone would definitely just be buzzing um um i i i saw a video online a guy in the bank in delta state actually slumped and died now he was queuing for hours according to um what's called the report from the public officer bright edefi that confirmed the death he was actually queuing not even this time around not even for money he was queuing to get his atm card right and he he was there for hours all of a sudden he slumped and he was confirmed dead that's that's like one too many now there were protesters in the orio that attempted the vandalized the secretary or your secretary vandalized it in an attempt to gain entrance into the governor's office so this thing that we're talking about it is you know i don't know how our leaders are able to sleep amidst all of these things because you are not the person that will be affected at the end of the day we are the ones that would feel the brunt because now me driving on the road i'm quite scared because anything can happen the pick up stones smash my windows rub me and move on you know and that is exactly what i foresee happening just like the way people were agitated during the ensars um the aftermath of the ensars that now led into what's called vandalizing and looting and all of that but let me hear um uti sardana come to you allero and and glory uti what are your thoughts you know how do you think this is affecting nigeria's and how is it affecting you i mean first of all it's just the heightened sense of frustration i mean we've been dealing with a fuel scarcity let me just call it an unending fuel scarcity because now i can't even remember how many months it's been that long almost a year we've been dealing with an unending fuel scarcity that's one layer patch we're dealing with the hiking prices we're dealing with inflation we're dealing with money issues right then to crown it all off the little money you now even have you can't access it i mean it's just i i want to put this akin to the straw that broke the camel's back it's just one too many right like i was saying earlier doesn't matter how cruel and at this point in time you can't but i agree that man and i mean it takes the biscuits it just is like we're out for the lives of nigerians and it's painful to see because it is as if orchestrated this is simply a botching implementation there's nothing new to changing of currency changing of notes it happens in countries all over the world this is simply an implementation problem and is this is this implementation uti one minute is this implementation what's it called the is it the the defaults rather now for this implementation the lack of effective implementation is it really the banks or because people are actually targeting the banks is it from the bank is this error from the bank or where exactly can we pinpoint this this this what's it called an ineffective implementation that is going on right now so i mean there are different players and stakeholders in this game right and every single organization at least from the banks everybody's doing everything that they can right but at the end of the day if there's not enough money out there so i even thought that these these notes were not being printed in nigeria seeing the story today where the president said that the maintain company these notes are being printed in nigeria it gives me further cause for concern but the reality of it is this whole process of painting notes it is a decision right like any other business decision we are going to make a change the process of change management comes into play you are set the needs and impact and the risks around what you have the the project you want to implement and you address it systematically so that you don't end up with a botched rollout and that's what this is the rollout has watched because today we have let's first of all even look at the system from a cash management perspective we have all had access to niger we've never had this problem before the distribution network by the banks by the atm to ignore had this problem before so when we say that we're blaming the bank for example right this is not a new process for banks the concept of collecting money and distributing money and putting cash in atm and paying cash around the counter it's not by any chance a new process so by the process of elimination please where would the problem lie so when it comes to the change management there is a problem because the fact is you're eating one thing for another if the other is available and the other one is collected efficiently this thing should go off without a hit so can we shine a spotlight on there and say that all of a sudden the experts in cash distribution are magically overnight no longer the experts are limited you know i'll come back to you because there was a statement you made but i want to hear the other ladies allero and gloria a statement you made about we have all had access to naira i put a clause there when you when you said it but not meant we've not all had access to new nairas because there is definitely nobody's going to tell me differently there's definitely a cabal that is that is that is making sure that they want to milk this process of this new naira notes that is being introduced into the system because how is it possible that we cannot get the notes from banks and atm's and they are spraying it all over parties but let me hear your thoughts allero and then look allero you come in please i mean for me as what has been just been ringing in my head is that the pressure of the way things are so i've been tilting towards the negative side for nigerians mostly since 2020 to now it's been too much at first we were struggling with the the dollar and pounds rate increasing heading up to almost 900 naira per pound as at last year the nigerians were suffering with that because that one alone made the cost of livelihood go up the cost of food had gone up everything everything had gone up we were managing that being the nigerians that we are always ready to you know there's hot water while still fighting and moving forward now again last year the issue of the fuel scarcity which typically for nigerians we feel like when this happens a couple of weeks and it's time to die off it hasn't still gone it's almost one year and then now a huge crisis with the naira redesign that is now making another in fact this one is not so chaotic because with all of these things compounded together food is expensive you're not able to go about your livelihood it's becoming harder for nigerians to manage it's not so bad that we are no longer looking at the government or looking at the policies that have been put in place to cost this now one looking we're not looking at each other we're not fighting one another it's not looking like um when you watch all those horror movies with zombies you know everybody is just no it's in each other up and that's what is looking like and it's so scary that we don't even know what will happen to us like you said you don't even know the next thing that will happen with you in traffic because these guys are on the streets these guys are the ones that will come when you're in traffic try to clean your windows or do because everybody is feeling the brunt right now like you said with not everybody that have access to this cash i haven't i think the the one i saw was the 200 naira note which was a while back today it really affected me today i mean all this while remember the lady that called in on tuesday that said her neighbors are actually begging for pure water they haven't even seen food to eat so yes this chaos is happening in fact i'm praying it doesn't become worse than this but this is human fighting at atm stands now they are fighting at gas stations what happens if fire happens maybe there's a fire accident there and then before you know it's another story entirely nigerians are frustrated nigerians are tired it's not becoming so hard for us to be patriotic i mean like lory said everybody everybody is jackmine because the youths that are we are willing to stay back to fight are no longer having the the yes and it's for me it's scary to be honest i really don't know what what else to do or say because we've been talking but hopefully we'll continue to talk and make sure that one day our solution will come but in the meantime we just keep pushing and keep praying and keep hoping that this scarcity of naira actually released but mostly this first scarcity is actually ridiculous what 335 i priced it and they gave me 3500 for 10 liters so that's at 350 but let me hear your thoughts i've had a first-hand experience of this and more so because i'm also in a position where i i have people management i have to manage people so i can cope with my own what is going on i'm also trying to you know pump up the energy positive energy to people around me so just imagine you wanting to get naira from pure s and they're charging 2000 naira so you're literally naira local currency buying your own currency so you're working hard to earn a living inflation is going crazy and still to even get that money which you worked out for you're still paying for it what how can how else can you define suffering it's i wish there's a word to quantify suffering or another word to really express it we are going through a lot and then again i think i don't know if this is another strategy of the government to implement the cashless policy because some of the feedback have gotten from people especially those taking public transport are like people have gotten to the extent of begging okay can i do transcribing with public transporters which is difficult but some people are now gradually becoming open-minded so it's also maybe we let us also be a little open-minded for ourselves not because of the government the government has failed us several times but there is also a way to make this not escalate out of hand right so if we can also be open-minded because that's how how else can we solve the current situation obviously the government is playing the blame games the president's come to say the banks are inefficient this is going on the top they are all playing the blame games are we are the ones suffering so how can we help ourselves maybe nitrous can be more open-minded since if it's the transfer public transporter please be open-minded if someone say i don't have cash help me i need to go to this location let me do a transfer be open-minded accept transfer you that supplier someone say please though people are no longer giving cash it's transfer can i transfer because my best are paying me through transfers accept it let's be open and make the situation a little better till when the government decides to listen to us so companies now for me personally i'm pushing more the hybrid model no no longer because of covid but because tasks are now finding it difficult to transit to work so let's just start looking for ways to make the situation better for us because the government they are not ready to do anything that's the truth because how will they not foresee this data that's another problem with the government we don't have data in this country how do you want to roll out new currency and you don't foresee this kind of things data would have shown you that if you don't um and roll um bring out this quantity of the currency this challenge but are you really buying the that that that that that notion that has been going around would you help me here are you guys buying that notion that cbn on their produced currency because no way is now all this let us let us be clear because i don't i do not i don't think i want to buy that that idea because for me what i see the madness when i see that people the money that everyone is looking for so desperately and they can't find it and you now see people throwing bundles in party it tells me that this is not a function of um what's it called scarcity of the currency this is a function of some people just deliberately try to make a turn to cause because now there are different um theories there are different theories that this thing is trying to drive us to the point where there is a what's it called as agitation agitation that you know postpone the elections so that is one theory going on there's another theory of this money is is done deliberately targeted at certain political party people so that they all these money politics that happened they used to happen in our political process is not happening in this particular political process that is another theory there's a theory about targeting people that have kept fraudulent kinds of income that they're trying to now trap back into the system that's another so there is a lot of theories happening there but i i i stand to to be corrected i i do not believe that it is for shortage of ink and money that this currency scarcity is happening because if it's shortage of money even the people spraying will not have seen any of those kind of videos surfacing online oh please permit me i i wish uti can help us answer this question because i know you talked about the bank so the government obviously the banks are a medium through which the government rolls out this new note so when you see people with this volume when they're others with literally none who do we blame at this point because they are the medium so i feel like the banks also have have a role to play maybe they did not foresee the extent to which this is this was going to maybe they thought cbn was going to release more notes right so they mismanaged the ones the first set that's just also how i see it so that's where the bank management coming uti i'm coming back to you let's go to a very short break stay with us we'll be right back all right so if you just tuned in um we're discussing the naira redesign and we're asking how it's affecting nigerians now please let's hear what you have to say remember you can join the conversation send us an smx or whatsapp to us where it's 1803-4663 you can also tweet at us at weisho africa one with the hashtag weisho uti you wanted to help us out here with the question that glorie asked do you think it's a function of mismanagement maybe they did not think so that's why they said something when i said something when i spoke the first time can you hear me yeah we can hear you now i said something when i spoke the first time i said the banks have been experts at cash management before this change you went to the atm money came out you went to the bank to collect money money came out you collected cash so all of a sudden the experts woke up one day and they don't know their jobs anymore no i just want somebody to answer that question so we just woke up one day and all of a sudden everybody just decided right across the whole industry that we don't know our jobs anymore we don't know how to drive bullion van we don't have to find the center to pick up the money they don't have to load atms i'm just asking these questions because i believe from the inception of atm atm that we're working in nigeria so why we throw these questions around i say is it the system or is it the change management process or is it the source i will simply ask the questions because it's important that we stop to think about these things it's easy to just say oh the people that are spraying money in parties where are they getting the money from we have always sprayed money at parties might i ask but uti even when it became illegal people were still spraying money at parties but uti even when it became illegal uti let's just spray money at parties uti you know that you know that it is during this monasticity that it occurred to me that it's been a long time they gave me mints in the banks but when people want to get mints they call certain account officers and they give them mints you know because before i could walk into a bank in holland they would pay me with brand new notes you you who are who are you that are talking have you ever come and gotten mints you say what have you ever these things are saying these things you are saying is not the incident they have you ever done it have i ever done what your account officer i've gotten mints yes now how many times have you done it i've done it how many times not too much i don't spray money in parties i don't have to so so it's basically the change clearly we read that he sprayed 90 percent 95 percent of the mints that he sprayed at parties his water parties who gives them the money and ask yourself where the source of that money is so that's what we're asking that's what we're asking now the question i have now so is it is it possible that maybe they got this from cbn directly because banks are the medium through which cbn will sell this what i'm simply asking you to query the facts that they are presented to you it's up to you to make the deductions you want to make but like i said it's interesting that overnight the experts at cash distribution all of a sudden don't know their jobs but this atm stands we're not producing money if typically on a good day you go to the bank and you get money you go to the atm stand and you put your card and you're able to withdraw money but now you're not able to that's where we are heading to right now let me even say to you that even these atm's dispensing money there are specific atm's that only dispense mints so i go there because me i like i like clean money i don't like dirty money so it's almost like the mints are kept for what's he called a kind of class of people which i'm not accusing anybody but i'm saying that it's been a long time you walked into a banking hall and you were giving mints you only see mints at party meaning that somebody yes now that's i'm landing somewhere that's meaning that somebody has got got in a business out of this because all of a sudden mints right in the the last time i bought mints at a party it was fifty thousand era and what's he called for five thousand era five thousand i said for what because me i just i normally do experiment i just asked them you know can i have the mint and all that it's not that i i sprayed the money anyway i kept it in my bag but it was five thousand era they charged me now with this currency redesign this last story we took that got me really crazy a a million era you paid 1.3 million for it who is sharing 300 thousand who is sharing it so there has to be i do not believe that i believe that this thing is a cartel and there is no way the people that are in the banking industry are not conniving with the people so it might be cbn plus the bank plus the this is officials did you see the notice that was put out did you see the the video that was put out of the officials um of the cbn watching a a bank load money into their atm yes yes i saw that so we have gotten to the extent where the cbn is monitoring the naira to the point where we are watching you put it into the atm and you are asking the source of the means okay let's leave it there let's leave it there let's take comments please this line we don't take calls on fridays i'm sorry so if you want to really contribute into the conversation send us an sms or whatsapp we don't take calls on fridays the phone has been buzzing the whatsapp line we don't take calls please thank you let's take comments okay so um from my comment the reality is that cbn has not count um has not count the cost of issuing the new the new note policy the cbn governor has got this this one wrong and would stop blaming the commercial banks i'm looking forward to seeing one of the director of cbn going to village villages close to kidnappers and and clifting kaduna or kastina to distribute the new notes rafael from zaria okay this from this is from our regular fan from yesterday we missed his message i said we must read it today go ahead all right say good evening my beautiful um sisters of what are you saying how is the nara scarcity affecting nigerians it is really affecting nigerians no shadow of doubts um trust me if this continues in about a week or two i foresee a protest on the streets and this protest may even be worse than answers so we should brace ourselves up for for the unexpected imagine me being denied my heart and money and right who does that since i was born i have never seen such suffering and hardship what kind of nigeria is this we can never be cash we can never be a cashless society because we need cash to take care of responsibilities i don't know if this is sabotage this thing is really biting it's really biting biting yeah i think that's why thank you so much daniel hello um so uti uti let's let's go back to technology right let's go back to technology so i i attempted a transaction you know these kinds of account that they don't have account numbers that maybe you're paying into an embassy or something that they don't have account numbers you just go and pay a deposit in the bank and take your receipt from the bank and i attempted a transaction and they told me because i don't bank with them because i was really proud walking into the bank with my atm card and they said they don't because i don't bank with the set bank i cannot make that payment so it's either i get somebody that has an account their phone the person's an account the person will use their card or i bring cash so let's talk this issue of cashless policy right in the capacity that we have right now do you guys believe that nigeria is ready for cashless policy policy cashless transactions look at the video that i watch i sent to you people on the group we've never started with we've not finished even issuing debit card amazon created a some a what's it called a palm payment solution so you just walk into the supermarket pick everything you want and use your palm to pay the money this is why we're moving away from atm card completely those are the societies that are ready for cashless policies so nigeria ready what do you ladies think i'll come to with you absolutely not we are not ready yes we're not ready we're not even close because even with the banks the banks are still struggling sorry the banks are still struggling to include certain the underserved we're still struggling to do that the banks are still struggling to open what they call these accounts that doesn't really need a lot of documentation we're still trying to the banks are still trying to do that so talk talk less of full cashless policy considering the fact that the naira note has not been redesigned in a while it's just as if we were never we're not prepared for this this was there's no preparation because i remember this cashless economy we've been preaching it since about some just time right and then we've gotten to the stage whereby it's not it's obvious that it there's no they've not been any type of adoption no the includes the financial inclusion that we've been trying to do they are not included because these are the same people that will tell you that they don't want the 15 charges they don't want the 100 charges the extra you remember remember the lady we're going to buy a person from on on tuesday that we did not have cash to give her and she said she does not want transfer because we come to think about it before you send that money there's a charge when you are withdrawing the money there's a charge and then the underserved who are most of the people that are facing this chaos now are the ones that are going to bear majority of the brunt it's not working so we we still have a problem of trust until people are able to trust the system this will not really work because if you go to some of the markets so i've had conversations with these traders in the market even one million i they prefer you pay them cash because number one your transfer may get stuck maybe one or two days and okay this same week for almost three days i could not do a transfer and that's where i almost got stranded because i had no cash i could not do transfers on my account what so until we are able to build trust and this inclusion so there are even some areas that don't still have banks in the rural area so what are the how did they didn't need to survive yes so we are not ready you're not ready what did you think we're ready we can't avoid the value that cashness brings that technology brings to everything let me know i'll just even say finance and we can't ignore that we've made great strides you know this is not the first condition of this cashless policy this is from the time when we started to add charges to cash deposits this has been a progressive change right and we're still a long way off but you have to sort of paint an intertwined picture about our challenges you know it's easy to think that everything sort of is on its own lane and everything is parallel you have a zero education system you have a highly a high proportion of children not in school you have adults that grow up to be semi-literate or fully literate you then come into a situation of identity a lot of human beings are walking around in Nigeria nobody knows they exist because they don't exist on any database with no reference points the countries where they pop out and see the sun and cry and say welcome to the world they give the target immediately with an identification let's be clear today when you go to get your and what's it called your ideas whatever information you want to give them you cannot have a different it or better your n i n you can have a different one on your botanical you can't you gotta be so there's so many factors that have to come together for this thing to work now the point about banks not being in the rural area to do cashless what do you need you need some form of technology where is that working some of those places where is data quality in some of those places we must forget that Nigeria is not the combination of Lagos and Gujiapata right so we are a we have to start which is that we are on a journey but I like when people also said we have to have open minds there are a lot of people today who can leverage this solution who just choose not to if you fall into that bucket you are really the people that need to have open minds like the businesses that can collect payments that don't want to and I know that infrastructure there are challenges again I can circle those challenges back to the lack of education absolutely you see this japa and this brain that we are we are talking about it's leaving from all these places and all the brains that are helping these systems to work they are not getting on planes and leaving so the entire ecosystem is at risk and that is what is even affecting we must first of all sorry it's it is lordable to want to do this and to want to go cashless it is there let's not let's not kid there are a lot of values to it it makes a lot of sense which is why I still come back down to the data like Laurie said the risk the different stakeholders the different types of people that you have we can't make decisions like I said thinking that the big cities are the only places there are so many different people with different circumstances within this ecosystem and the system has to serve them all yeah you know when you cannot find it when basically they're not there people become feral and that's what we are seeing we're seeing high intention we're seeing people fighting and seeing so many videos of people be fighting in banking hall at 8 a.m. people stripping the frustrations at the tensions are real and could be avoided you know uti I was going to say that you know even with this structure right from the very first if it was a serious government I was thinking already you already knew that everybody needed an NIN so what stops at least when they have decided and they have started the process of registering people for an NIN what stops the the the what's it called government to start to take NIN for newborn babies like as they come up for your mother they are registering you so at least that's this thing they may start working it back to other people that haven't gotten it so there is even no you know no progressive progressive attempts for us we don't even know our numbers when did we take a census last as a country because why they use it as political tools to want to what's it called now to take to say oh they have 10 million voters me what they had maybe like two million you know they want to exaggerate based on the numbers you know so these things it's not helping that you want to use this thing to your to a faith to favor a certain thing it's affecting or the other thing now look at what you said about jackpot jackpot is what is affecting all of us our bank apps are beginning to behave like a was equal ghost rider is on today is off tomorrow because now most of the tech guys are seeing better opportunities and they're leaving the country so whether we like it or not as a country this is the time we must fix this country because if we if we don't we are damned if we do god will help us let's take some more comments please okay so good evening um ladies i don't blame say plus ladies i don't blame cbm it's bank that made life unbearable to common nigerian i went to a bank at by 6 a.m to collect a hoe immediately the bank official arrived at 8 a.m and get mouth told me that the crowd that access don't have money it's finished yesterday i smiled and went back in faith some people started cursing them and ask them where is our money this is from sami in onicha wow you know sami and i feel your pain but please let's not get agitated to the point of violence i think if we don't go do violence that we go suffer more and they tell you now okay only god knows the people that have already been injured or have even died based on all of this yes go ahead okay so my comment um good evening lovely presenters some Nigerians are terrible and greedy cbn innovation is fantastic but dubious reckless individuals are trying to frustrate the system the truth of the matter is that we just have to keep pushing uti um sir i have a couple here the fact that i share your view that they're bad eggs in the banking system just like in every other system in nigeria the money comes from the cbn so you should know the people trading the money even some banks pride cbn officials to receive means it's a terrible country and i hope we all have our pbc so we can fix the mess once and for all um all of these don't have names so please put your names the cashless policy is a good idea my only concern is the fact that our ict is not good enough cashless policy will reduce corruption to a large extent and mark the end of kidnapping uh of the kidnapping business we have to embrace it another one says the government can invest in ict development it's not too difficult once that's done we're good to go um and the final one says my dear sisters in house cbn governor and presidency are pretending that they are helping nigeria nigeria need to go more than ever and thanks that's past $1 from lafya in asirasi go ahead um this person says there is no cashless society in the world what many countries do is to create opportunities for their citizens to use more credit cards in their transactions than much physical cash we can we are not ready for such program in nigeria without having the enabling systems in place like social security numbers for citizens alero there's too many comments today go ahead well good evening cbn released a statement that 100 that 100 naira 15 and 20 naira bills will be paid across across the counter why are these denominations unavailable how how do these how do people get bundles of the new note to spread parties what's the challenge of the bank cbn funding the the atms and way forward number one the banks are required to improve the online banking options as it's not very effective these days number two cbn commercial bank cbn and the commercial bank to ensure all atms are funded the policy is good we need to support it and make it work this is probably the city of naira proves that our leaders are bbc best before computer ah god help us what do you have one more comment the two the comments are just coming guys we're sorry we can't take more comments this one says hello ladies on february 1st i find myself i found myself having to buy 20 000 for 22 000 from a purest operator before going to the market i got 20 christ one thousand naira so i spent 22k to get 20 000 i became conscious of the fact that one k was now worth 1.1 k i became reluctant to spend the hard to combine notes in the market i'd be paying higher air rates for everything so i went to my customers and told them i had no cash and wanted to transfer mama michael who sells turkey has an account but mama stephanie who sells mickey and red we didn't have a thousand neither does mama daniel who sells tigers mama michael accepted to have all their money transferred into her account mama mara was stuck though i buy dry fish etc right now that she didn't want to join money issues with her apparently she's whichever maker market politics market politics i mean like the messages are pouring we're sorry we can't take more comments as i said yesterday i will say it again today if this capacity continue i will continue saying something about it but thank you so much ladies we had a fantastic conversation thank you uti thank you allera and thank you glorie now before we go and show you follow us across all our social media handles that waste your africa you can interact with us further drop a comment and more importantly follow all our engagements on social media like share and invite your families and friends to watch and follow the conversation now if you miss today's co-chair it is a game there's no complaint that is more common than that of scarcity of money okay we'll see you guys tomorrow at 8 p.m as we bring another great conversation to your screen enjoy hey