By Rotimi Fasan

IT’s already midweek as you read this. Dare we hope that the week can yet end on a happy note for Nigerians? The first two days of the week had not been different from the previous week of contrived trouble, when Nigerians were railroaded into the strange business of trading in their own naira in order to engage in everyday activities; transact business, and keep body and soul together.

Nigerians were still queuing up at fuel stations, and the so-called new naira notes are still as scarce as a hound’s tooth. They remain a product for the black market, and ordinary Nigerians are being urged to accept their condition by the likes of a presidential aide whose tendencies for juvenile commentary, while defending the position of his principal, are matched only by his air of feline complacency, from which his apparently dogmatic pretensions spring.

Otherwise, what is the point of this man’s claim that his expenses are within the N20,000 weekly withdrawal limit imposed by the impossible bankers and policymakers in charge of the country’s government and Central Bank? Femi Adesina is, by his claim, telling Nigerians that their insufferable experience in the hands of the Muhammadu Buhari-led government is not unique.

This man actually fancies himself being in the same position as an average Nigerian, despite the privileges and connections that the appurtenances of power in which he is ensconced make available to him. The bubble in which those who surround President Buhari live simply highlights the double blindfolds that must have been thrown around the President himself. It is the reason he had the presence of mind to ask for one more additional week to sort out the self-made chaos of naira note scarcity that Nigerians had found themselves in.

Any other person who was fully “aware” of and had not been desensitised to the pain of the people couldn’t have asked for one more week of national pain. But Daniel, who came to judgement in the form of the Supreme Court Justices, tried to end the presidential misery by granting the prayers of three state governors, members of the President’s own All Progressives Congress party, who had gone to court to challenge the decision of Abuja, through the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, to discontinue the use of the old naira notes after the February 10 deadline it had decreed. Nasir el-Rufai, Yahaya Bello, and Bello Matawale, the respective governors of Kaduna, Kogi, and Zamfara states, had challenged the arrogance of President Buhari and Emefiele to punish Nigerians for no clear reason.

Their efforts have borne some fruit, as the apex court is taking a decision on the issue today. But until the case before it is determined, the old naira notes remain legal tender in Nigeria. One would have thought that the intervention of the Supreme Court, which gave the President additional time to resolve the crisis he chose to inflict on Nigerians at the tail-end of his presidency, provided a lifeline for him to end the entire fiasco of his government’s monetary policy that has gone haywire. But Buhari wouldn’t be who he is if he could do anything without his accustomed rigidity. He, together with the Central Bank Governor, chose to double down on their earlier position. thus leaving Nigerians still stranded at fuel stations and cash-strapped.

Four more state governors, all members of the APC, have joined their colleagues in the Supreme Court as I write this, determined to force some concession out of President Buhari. As things stand, APC looks like a divided house. But the issue extends beyond the APC, as the Governors’ Forum has joined the chorus in condemning the short time frame set for Nigerians to discard their old naira notes (can we really call the notes old, given that they are still in use even more than the so-called new notes)?

The Buhari government has shown itself stone-deaf in its rejection of every piece of advice and cautionary word that has come its way. Its management of the country’s monetary policy, especially with regard to the naira change policy, flies in the face of what is known the world over. Not even the advice of the International Monetary Bank would sway this government from its pursuit of its sadistic policy, which appears driven by nothing else but a sense of vendetta which all goes to show that Buhari has not improved his knowledge of governance and policy-making in four decades. 

As he was in April 1984, when a similar naira change policy, driven by hate and megalomania, plunged the country into avoidable misery, so he is in 2023. If Buhari could repeat almost to the smallest detail what he did in 1984, if he could trace his 1984 trajectory without missing a leg, there’s no reason to hold Emefiele wholly responsible for this policy failure. This koboko of a policy has all over it the imprint of Buhari, the military dictator. Unlike other life-affirming things that he is said not to be aware of, Buhari is aware of the present predicament of Nigerians.

He is the author and finisher of the yet-unfolding tragedy. He might have hidden behind the unsmiling face of Tunde Idiagbon in 1984, just as he is again hiding behind Emefiele in 2023, but the implementation of this naira change and recolouration scheme at this time is a product of his military mentality. He should be held fully responsible for whatever ugly outcome concludes the process. The pain Nigerians are going through is of his making. Those offering excuses on his behalf are either genuinely ignorant of his machinations, overtly generous to him, or are being clever by half. Buhari knows where he is headed and what he hopes to achieve with this dangerously executed policy of self-flaggelation. It is up to him to put an end to it if he wants to. But so far, there’s no sign of him doing that. He would, it would seem, like to hear more of the anguished cries of Nigerians who are going naked and/or falling to their deaths while on queues in banking halls.

While Syria and Turkey are reeling from natural disasters of unimaginable proportions, we are losing our peace in our man-made fiasco. There’s the pretense that President Buhari is doing this all in a bid to fight corruption, but what can be more corrupt than the arbitrary use of power over a helpless people? What exactly is the President hoping to achieve with his type of cashless policy that nobody understands and that is as good as making everyone totally impoverished despite whatever anyone may have as deposits in their bank account.