Cashless Banking: So Far, How Far?; Nigeria at 59; we are being gang-raped! - Ik Muo. PhD.

Last week, I shared in this column, my preview of the cashless policy and my simple strategy for its achievement (Gradual removal of higher denominations).  That was 8 years ago. Today, we take some excerpts from that preview (in 2011)as well as my review of the programme in its first year of operation, which was 7 years ago( Ik Muo, Cashless Banking: So Far, how far? BusinessDay. 16/10/12).  I put on my Change Management and  started by arguing against change ‘by-fire-by-force’ and arguing for a reward for those who change. Kindly read on, noting that the developments mentioned here  are now 7/8 years ‘old’.

…Furthermore, as an OB practitioner and a student of change management, I make bold to state and unequivocally too, that attitudinal change is never successfully legislated. Change involves negotiation, persuasion, explanation, education, awareness and consensus building. Most important, the WIIIFM question (What Is In It For Me) must be satisfactorily addressed. There is nothing wrong in legislating change; but such a legislation will not lead to the expected change. Of course, there is a gulf of difference between change and transition because the ultimate destination is a transition to the desired mindset, attitude and behaviours

People are also rewarded to change. Ordinarily, behavior can be shaped through positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment and elimination. Probably because of our years of militarized governance, we readily rely on punishment or at best, negative reinforcement. Part of the reasons for this new cash policy and other related initiatives is to reduce cost-to-serve (which should actually be the concern of the banks!). It is obvious that the cost of physical cash withdrawals is higher than the cost of the various automated and electronic alternatives. What efforts have the banks made to share the gains (savings) of non-cash operations with their customers? If it costs N10 to serve a walk-in customer and N2 to serve an ATM customer, why should banks not pay customers N3 per transaction to migrate to the ATMs? Why abolish COT to ATM customers (or charge lower COT) as an inducement for patronizing that channel? Of course, that is in our character! The government will not provide parking spaces or urinal for the public,and boldly  place sing-boards that read ‘Don’t Park’ and ‘Don’t Urinate’ everywhere and punish people for parking and urinating- because they must urinate and they must park!

The Central bank has invested a humongous quantum of resources(quantifiable and mostly un quantifiable)to prosecute in the last two years. A lot of hard cash, intellectual capital, truth and propaganda have been invested in the project and people in advertisement, POS/ATM business have been smiling to the bank.  And Mr Tunde Lemo (DGM Ops, CBN) has lost some weight as he preaches and prances from one TV programme to another conference to the next Newspaper house and yet another radio interview to explain why and how there is no alternative to cashlessness. I wish to state upfront that I support the cashless agenda and it may even be an appropriate priority project. But what I am not comfortable about is the  shock and awe approach to its implementation, the punitive dimension, failure to differentiate between change and transition and assuming that a habit that had been in our character for ages will be changed by a few newspaper adverts, TV appearances , draconian charges and orders from the CBN

It is important to note that we are not the first to attempt to migrate from one payment system or platform to another. Thus, there is no need raising  unnecessary dust as if it has not been done before or as if our own migration is unique. Let us examine a recent report in the technology section of Financial Times by Richard Waters and published  by BusinessDay of 8/10/12(p60). It is all about efforts to apply  the near-field technology to  upgrade the payment system so as to create a commercial environment without cash and cards! It involves recognizing people with their pictures as they approach, billing and selling to them and sending the debit and receipt to their smart-phones. One thing about this techy wonder is that it is being driven by customers who are tired of carrying cards and wallets and the  ‘technopreneurs’ who are developing the system and hoping to make a kill with their inventions. The banks are not involved and definitely, the FED is not a party to these developments which as at now are being spearheaded by about 150 developers around the globe. The ultimate goal is to develop digital wallets where smartphone users will store virtualized methods of payment together with loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts  and methods of identification

While the technology is being perfected and customers are impatient, the developers keep on working on various options to improve their offerings, reduce costs, increase reliability and keep the customers happy . The retailers are also on the standby, keying into the system and strategizing on how to migrate to the new technology. Nobody is breathing down anybody’s neck; no body is paying outrageous charges; nobody is licensing the vendors[which some lawyers have declared as illegal and against free-market operations] and nobody is punished for withdrawing or depositing HIS/HER money! The head of the payment arm of eBay also has a word of advice for us here when he said that ‘changing habits takes time and changing habits in money takes more time’.

The lessons from the above experience are very clear and compares unfavourably with our own attempt to force cashlessness on the people. The CBN has literarily abandoned its other daunting responsibilities while the banks, the machine vendors and other relevant service providers are just hanging out there with their clippers, shaving off our accounts with reckless abandon!  Incidentally, the major indicator of success being harped upon by the CBN and the banks is the number of POS deployed and scheduled to be deployed. Whether those POSs are being utilised, whether they are working, peoples’ dissatisfaction with the double charges, and the issue of electricity and failure of technology are cleverly played down.

 As a student of change management, I am not surprised at this emphasis on the POS deployment statistics .In the politics of change management, one of the key areas of intense politicking is in the choice of indicators of success. People want indicators that portray their performance very positively. Thus while the number of POS is a very positive indicator, the number of active POS may not be that flattering. For a start, the POS figures are conflicting. In a chart published in Thisday (27/6/12)and sourced from CBN, the POS deployment was stated as rising from 18874 in March, 2012 to 100000 in June, 2012. But Olu Adaramewa, a Deputy Director with CBN recently stated that as at December, 2011, there were 40000 POS in ‘circulation’ (conference on Nigerian Trasition to cashlessness, 8/10/12). But the key issue is that a recent report from NIBSS reports that there are only 14000 active POS as at July, 2012. NIBS is the POS aggregator in Nigeria. So only about 10% of the POS are operational and this woeful picture is due to poor knowledge and skill, attitude, technical issues, delayed receipts etc. That is bad enough.

 Other Matters: Nigeria at 59: As we are being raped…!

I didn’t want to make any comments on this 59^th Independence anniversary. It has become a mere show, devoid of its historical and existential significance. And… beyond the public holidays, people no longer remember that October1 is here. There is this sardonic joke of unknown origin: that a woman who is being raped and cannot do anything about it should relax and enjoy the thing. I  remembered that joke, which I only refer to whenever I believe that I am in a ‘safe environment’, when I also realised, as I reminisced on this independent anniversary, that we are being brazenly RAPED. We are being raped by EXECUTHIEVES who do not know what to execute and how to execute the ‘nothing’, who impose harsh economic medicaments on the masses  and turn them into ‘walking dead’; who ask us to tighten our belts while their trousers are held by elastic bands.

Their only expertise is on horse-trading and blame-trading  they see nothing wrong in our exclusive, lopsided  governance structure.

 We are being raped by legislooters who earn the highest in the world and who believe that  spending N5bn+ on cars  in this self-inflicted austere times when an N^th  committee is being set up on the minimum wage, is ‘nothing much’; who send their children in the best schools in the world but will not legislate for decent education for the ‘masses’.

We are being raped by the judiciary where TECHNICALITY, however defined, is more important that law and justice. And if the high and mighty cannot obtain justice,  due to technicality et al,you  can then imagine the fate of  the proverbial common man, whom they always confuse by the worn-out cliché: the judiciary is the last hope of the common man!. But the greatest problem is that while we are being raped by ‘the government’, we are also raping ourselves! We are being raped by greedy pastors who live in sinful opulence while their followers live in indescribable poverty. 

We are being raped by those engaged in criminal entrepreneurship: merchants of fake drugs, kidnap kingpins and their consultants, native doctors whose only strength  depend on human sacrifice, transporters who  triple their fares once there is  a sign of increased demand, policemen who will readily request for ‘partikolas’ even from their parents and area boys who brazenly dispossess bus drivers of their earnings, with the support of big men who would look the other way.   We even encourage this all-round raping by our gold-medal in collective DOCILITY! Back to that wry joke, what then do we do as we are being gang-raped? But I believe that it shall come to  pass; I believe that Nigerian ‘go survive’ and I pray that the future generations will not be as docile as this generation so that when our political-servants refuse to serve, they will ask questions and if necessary, fire those servants. I thank God for making it to October 2019.

My friend of 40 years, Anthony Maduka, a jolly good fellow, who is so tall that I named him ‘Long-John’ and who distributed happiness, under all circumstances, to all around him, could not make it. He died on 30/9/19 after 48 hours of sickness. However bad things are, lets thank God for life because once there is life, there is still HOPE.

- Ik Muo. PhD. Department of Business Administration, OOU, Ago Iwoye