How do you explain a situation where your money depreciates in value? A situation where your local currency falls about -80% below margins. A situation where your local bank notes are worthless! Lete take you back to how life was earlier this year and how our hard earned money could only buy peanuts no matter how big the currency was.
I want to share my personal story on how life was regarding my country's recent cashless policy.
Whenever i remember the hardship I went through with every other citizen in my country regarding the cashless policy drama recently, I can't help but to thank God for leading us through such an awkward moment in life. It wasn't a moment for the faint hearted where our own money was held up in the banks without us having complete and free access to it, what could be worse than this?
Before then, a grace period was given to everyone in the country to go deposit old currencies into the bank before it was too late but still and unfortunately, not everyone was able to do so because of the mass population in every banks and secondly, you need to hold some physical cash to survive on a daily.
We were told to only make digital transactions as they made changes and redesigned the previous old bank notes and after redesigning, all old notes were no longer acceptable as a legal tender in the country. New bank notes were limited and only few people were opportune to even have a single note in their pockets.
I do not want to re-emphasize on the cashless policy but rather to point out a situation where huge amounts of money were going down for just peanuts.
Back then I still had a couple of old bank notes that i couldn't deposit to my bank because I was always busy with work and had no time to sit all day in the queue at the bank. It was about 23 thousand naira bills and they were my pocket money. I visited the market one afternoon to get some food items and all of a sudden no body was willing to receive my old currencies in exchange for any goods at all.
That was the day i realized that the country actually meant what they said about old currencies no longer being a legal tender despite the fact that you worked for that currency.
After a while i saw people gathered at a spot and i was curious to know what was happening over there so I took a walk closer and found out that a man was actually collecting old currencies to seel some tuners of yam, tomatoes, potatoes and some vegetables but at a rate of -75% of your old currencies. This means that if you want to buy an item worth $100 you are paying $400 old currency to receive this item
It was a big opportunity for some people to at least spend off their old currencies in other not to loose it completely due to it no longer being a legal tender for goods and services. I also joined this train and used the opportunity to buy some cups of rice, beans and tomatoes for 22,00 naira and the quantity i received was exactly 1/4 which is a quarter of the usual amount. This was one of the unbelievable spendings that I've ever made in my life and i couldn't even regret it because it was more like an opportunity and a help to us. I believe every nigerian also witnessed this moment of tragedy but thank God life is better now. Thank you for reading through β€οΈ.
