The CBN’s Blunder Called 10days Extension

The blunder by CBN, product of lack of confidence in self and compromise is the reason for the suffering in the land

The Courts shouldn’t have business interfering in the CBN’s constitutional duties. This is not without saying that CBN relegated in its duties by compromise.

The suffering was ocassioned by CBN, not by setting January 31 deadline, but by annulling it by 10 days extension. How you may ask? Run-up to January 31, Nigerians have lodged all their old currency into the bank, waiting to start transacting with the new currency only to be jolted by the 10days extension by the CBN. This blunder by CBN, which was a product of lack of confidence in self and compromise is the reason for the suffering.

With the 31st January deadline in place, people who have new currency would have been transacting freely with it, while those yet to get would have gone to bank to get or get it through exchange of goods and services. With the extension, people tended to hoard the new currency, while the old one was virtually out of circulation.

The result is that people are not spending the new currency as much as they are getting it. To worsen the problem, the ‘swap’ of a language was all over the places. Late depositors of their old money could at best be allowed to lodge and not to ‘swap’.

The best and quickest way of coming out of this quagmire is to enforce the 10th February deadline. Everybody will have no choice than to spend the new money they have, because that’s the only one they’ve got.

As long as the extension continues the problem and hardship will continue, because ‘bad money will continue to drive away good money ‘. People who have the new money would not want to spend it because they would not want to collect the old money in return as change or anything.