 We're back with the breakfast and plus TV Africa. The time for us to look at our second conversation. After several weeks of hardship occasioned by the narrow scarcity, some semblance of sanity had returned as the banking halls and ATM points with customers were able to assess cash. With less stress, some people say, well, all the customers who thronged to various banks and ATM points could not get cash as much as they had desired, but some people say it's more of an improvement to what we have experienced over time, you know, since December up until from December January up until this moment. However, the central bank of Nigerian and apparent move to vet the planned strike by the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC over the Naira scarcity had authored the banks to open on Saturday, even on Sunday to enable Nigerians access cash. The apex bank has also thrown up its vault open for banks to have cash to circulate. But we'll just be speaking with Frank Elia, who is a technology and media news editor of the Business Day, right here in Lagos. Frank, it's good to have you join us this morning. Good morning. Once again. Good morning and it's always a pleasure to be on stage with you. Yes, please. So I'd like to ask you what lessons do you think that we can take from all of this? 2012, it wasn't really the first time we've had an introduction of this policy. You want to say reintroduction at a time we took a pause in 2015, just almost at the time we had the elections and again, we didn't really succeed with the whole cashless policy and all and what have you. But my question to you this morning now is what lessons do you think we can derive from this event and experience? I think the lessons from it will be that we need more communication with the authorities. Over time, we have seen the central bank of Nigeria pushing cashless policy, which is very laudable in something that we should encourage. But then when you do it, the processes that need to be followed, there are people that you need to carry along. Nigerians are not people that are very difficult to deal with, unless you decide you don't want to talk to them. And I also think that many people are not so receptive to change. So if you're going to bring change to them, you have to be deliberate about it, you have to show them why they need it. Cash has remained king for over many decades now. And even currently, we still have over 70% of transactions being done, cash. So it's not something you just wake up in the morning and say you want to remove cash from the system and you want everybody to go cashless without adequate communication. People need to know how does this benefit me. It's always the what's in it for me factor that was lacking in this process. The CBN failed to take the people along. And in communicating with the president first, I would have also expected the CBN to go to the governors and also carry them along. Besides the governors, you now have the consumers. Who are the people these policies are going to affect? Because as you have clearly seen, the people that were affected most were not the politicians. It was not the government officials. It was clearly people at the middle levels and also the grassroots. The next time we're trying stuff like this, it's important to be nice to carry along the people. When we had this policy introduced, although at the time we didn't have the redesign of the Naira note, which is a new development for 2022 or 2023, if you like to put, but how much more time can we have? 2012, we suspended it. We were going cashless. And now and again, you know, we haven't been able to achieve that 100. So what time do we still need? It comes with the question of what time, how much time can you take for us to bring cashless to bear. We would have done that from the beginning. First of all, was the fact that the CBN did not put in the infrastructure, the criminal infrastructure that is needed for this process to become seamless. We saw what happened during the new note capacity, that people who try to make transactions, who try to use the U.S.S.B., who try to use the U.S.A. agents had many failed transactions. Those things are not just something that just happens. There are factors that make those things happen. NEVS was a great idea, all right? And it has been working so far, but it needs more capacity. We have clearly seen that there's more capacity for NEVS, all right? NEVS, sorry. We need to expand the capacity of NEVS. We also need to put in the necessary infrastructure. Network is very important, all right? The CBN and the telcos clearly need to work together to expand the broadband infrastructure that we have in the country. There are different places in this country that still don't have connectivity or sufficient broadband working for them. So, when you try to make transactions from those places, it becomes a challenge. So, if we had addressed those things from 2012, when these cashless policies started, perhaps by now we'll be counting maybe 80% implementation. We will not be at where we are currently. But we have failed to do that, and we're just pushing our policies without thinking what about being deliberate about putting in the infrastructure that needed for payment. I think with the time that we have now, the CBN now needs to go back to the drawing board and put in the foundation because network is the foundation. Frank, I'd like to intercept at this point. When you say the infrastructure, yes, it's very important that we need to scale up infrastructure for digital banking, and that should be done. But who are we saying, whose responsibility is it to scale up this infrastructure? Should it be governments? Should it be deregulators? I mean, who exactly are we talking to at this point? So, you have highlighted that there's need for us to have the necessary infrastructure. You say infrastructure for digital banking, and I'm saying, yes, that sounds very true, and it's important that we scale up infrastructure for the banking sector, digital banking. But whose responsibility should this be? Okay. So, whose responsibility should it be? It should be the responsibility of first the regulator, all right, or putting the environment that helps investors to come and make the money to break the infrastructure. Take for instance, we have, as of 2022, the number of bank branches that we have in this country got down to less than 5,000, all right? The less than 5,000 bank branches, what you have is Lagos controls a major portion of that. Then you have a Buddha, you have the cities that control, then you get to other states which are presumed to be rural or have more rural communities. They have less bank services. Then you say, okay, if we're not going to use the grant, less QS agents. Currently, there are about 2 million QS agents that we have, all right? And of course with terminals or that number as well. Then again, make those controls a large portion of that, of that, and pure agents and also terminals. Then you have a Buddha, you have what a city, you know, so that it looks like it's next to the distribution of payment infrastructure that needs to be urgently addressed. Yes, the city has a relief guidelines for POS operations across the country and I've also mandated that more price is given to rural areas, but the companies are not eagerly going there, right? Because insecurity, okay? So we've got the problem of insecurity and we have a problem of infrastructure. The road networks are not adequate for people to go there. And where you need to know the road network infrastructure, you probably also have broadband network not functioning efficiently. For instance, when Canceler and some other state in the north of telecom infrastructure, of course, what you expect is that all that needs to be expected. Payment is expected and all that financial subsidies are also expected, you know. So it is a function of the government coming or taking a road seriously by making sure that security, by making sure that the money that you are collecting as roads, that you seem it adequately to provide the road network that we need. Then when you do under, you also address the issues of taxation. Multiplication is also causing difficulties from going to the areas that they're supposed to go to. Instead, they will process this payment because even if they are taxed multiple times, they can't make the money that you used to pay the taxes. But if you put them in other states where they are taxed multiple times and the people are not, or the demand is not sufficient enough to make up with that tax, then we don't want to go there again. So those are things that need to be addressed. We need a uniform tax system. We need our infrastructure spread out across the states. More people need to be incentivized to become purest agents, not purest agents in Lagos, but purest agents in these rural communities where the need is very high. Well, Frank, we have to go now. Thank you so much for being part of the show this morning. We do appreciate your time. And we look forward to sharing more of it as we proceed. Well, that's the size of a conversation this morning on the breakfast. And we asked that if you missed that on any part of it, we'll be great for you to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and do subscribe to our YouTube channel at Plus TV Africa, Plus TV Africa Lifestyle. My name is Messy Boppel. Have a great morning. And my name is Kofi Bartels. Good morning.