The Supreme Court of Nigeria has, inadvertently, become what Apostle Paul described in the Holy Scriptures as “All things to all men”. Corrupt and fraudulent politicians in collaboration with grossly inefficient and deceitful election umpires surreptitiously stripped the Nigerian electorate of powers to choose leaders.
That power has been inauspiciously handed over to the Supreme Court of Nigeria. After millions of voters baking under the scorching sun or drenching in torrential rains voted to select their leaders, a gross mismanagement of the election process by the umpire or stupid dispute by the contestants would see seven justices of the Supreme Court discarding the decision of millions in the electorate and imposing a leader on the state.
Many believe that the powers of the court should be restricted to that of cancelling fraudulent elections and ordering fresh polls that would reflect the views of the electorate rather than allowing seven men to rubbish the decision of millions.
Nigerian rulers seemingly prefer the status quo. The logical reason may be that it is easier to influence the decision of seven men than that of millions in the electorate.
Now the Supreme Court has commandeered even more powers. It has become the de facto regulator of Nigeria’s beleaguered banking system. Some banks obey the court order on old notes in utter defiance of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Godwin Emefiele, the besieged governor of the CBN, ceded his regulatory powers to the Supreme Court by mismanaging the naira redesign project.
The Supreme Court simply filled the vacuum he created. Emefiele surreptitiously bungled a laudable programme to redesign the naira in a desperate bid to mop up trillions of naira in looted old notes stacked in the homes of corrupt politicians.
Most of the loots had actually been retrieved, but the replacement with new notes had turned Nigeria into a spontaneous “less cash” society since it lacks the infrastructure to operate as a cashless economy.
The torment borne by Nigeria’s inconsequential majority who spend millions of man hours waiting for their hard-earned money in banks is engendered by Emefiele’s gross miscalculation of the ability of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC) to churn out N65 million bank notes within weeks.
Emefiele’s miscalculation is unpardonable. It portrays a leader with the deficiency in medium-term planning. A CBN deputy governor sits on the board of NSPMC. Ironically, the apex bank cannot leverage on that unfathomable insider advantage and plan the printing of new notes in a way that would not strangle Nigeria’s economy with a merciless cash crunch.
The litigant governors who took the matter to the Supreme Court did not go there to defend the interest of Nigeria’s toiling masses. They were there to protect the trillions of naira in old notes they looted from public till.
Emefiele’s bungling of the naira redesign project has taken Nigeria perilously close to a third recession in six years. Nothing is working again. People just do not have the cash to handle normal transactions. Petrol retail outlets that manage to sell at regulated pump price demand cash from motorists.
Those without cash are pushed to the merciless marketers who sell at anything from N250 per liter.
A woman travelling from Abeokuta to Lagos was dropped in the middle of the forest by a heartless driver because she had no cash to pay for the fare and had wanted to pay by a bank transfer.
While market women selling vegetables and fruits have grudgingly accepted bank transfers, drivers of the thousands of rickety buses dotting Nigeria’s transport landscape have rigidly insisted on collecting cash. Commuters pay N1, 500 to buy N5, 000 cash at PoS terminals to fund their trips.
The strange thing about Emefiele’s CBN is that even after President Muhammadu Buhari, in apparent contempt of an earlier ruling of the Supreme Court, extended the legal tender life span of the old N200 notes, the notes could still not be found in banks.
The cash crunch has crippled the economy and turned many hard working Nigerians with huge sums in banks to beggars. Last week, a rich man with a posh Lexus Jeep begged a woman for N1, 000 cash to eat at a restaurant because the operators rejected bank transfers on the grounds that most of the transfers take weeks to consummate. Payees often spend hours in the banks to clear transfers that debited the payer and failed to credit the payee.
If the cash crunch is CBN’s way of transforming Nigeria into a cashless economy, no one knows why the regulator cannot order banks to expand their network to accommodate the quadrupled volume of mobile banking transactions.
Nigeria’s mobile banking network infrastructure was designed to handle 1.2 million transactions daily. The cash crunch engendered by the bungling of the naira redesign project now compels it to handle something close to four million transactions daily.
That explains the thousands of failed transfers where the payer would be debited while the payee is not credited. It equally explains why thousands of account holders besiege banks’ customer care units daily to settle unconsummated transfers.
An electronic expert contends that the system could be expanded within days. The deafening silence by the regulator and operators of the banking system over a failed currency redesign project and an over-stretched mobile banking network has crippled the economy.
The truth is that the federal government cannot afford to defy the ruling of the Supreme Court much longer. The excuse at the moment is that government is still waiting for a certified true copy of the court judgment on the matter.
By the time the government gets a copy of the ruling and decides whether to obey it, Emefiele would have lost most of his authority as banking system regulator.
In apparent defiance of the CBN, some banks pay out the old notes in obedience to the Supreme Court. The general public openly ignores the notes until CBN speaks.
The standoff between the executive and the judiciary has split the country apart. It is worsening unemployment.
