Good day hive Naija community, this is my entry for this week's contest in the community. The naira redesign and cashless policy were not taken seriously by Nigerians when the CBN first issued its statement and gave the deadline for depositing all old notes in the bank and as I know my country's people they will wait till it pressing before obeying any policy made by the Nigerian government, the same thing happened during the NIN period when before the last day a lot of Nigerians came out to register for their NIN and it caused a lot of problems.
The CBN gave another month for all old notes to be returned and again my country relaxed when the due date approached again they flooded banks to deposit their old note. Nigerians thought the new notes would correlate quickly but it was not the case as some banks kept dispensing old notes in ATMs and made it seem the CBN did not release an adequate supply of the new currency.
The CBN sent some of its staff to investigate the process and a lot was uncovered during the process, bank managers got arrested for holding the new notes, some were exposed for fraud and then this term hit me( na we dey do ourselves for this country).
When the CBN first published the cashless policy and instructed banks to only pay twenty thousand over the counter I was less worried because to me it was a good policy. Where I live it takes one hour to get to the bank and after the stress of jumping buses the next thing is to stand in a long queue in the back, so to me, it was a relief from the stressful journey to the bank, but it was only the beginning of a new stress pattern.
The Bank network was nothing but horrible during the first month the CBN initiated the policy. I started saving and downloading transaction receipts just in case the receiver claimed not to have received my payment to provide evidence of the successful transaction. Some people use the opportunity to make more money off people doing transfers and impose they pay some amount of charges for every transfer they made and if the individual is not ok with it they can go to another place to get what they want.
Some retail shops in my area refused to accept transfers from me and demanded only cash as means of payment for anything I want to purchase, they made the day-to-day consumer activities more difficult for a lot of individuals and I began to wonder where exactly they want me to get cash when all the POS agent in the area had close down their shops because of the scarcity of cash and at some point, I felt those retailers are being wicked to people. The cashless policy experience has been terrible for my end but I believe in time people will learn to embrace the policy.
So guys that will be all, thanks for stopping by, and have a good day.