In my naive understanding, I thought policymaking was to facilitate smooth, efficient running of a country. How wrong I was and still am!
The educational attainment between northern Nigeria and southern Nigeria is asymmetrical. Thus, while formulating policies, it is pertinent for policymakers to take into account the peculiarities of the regions. For example, financial inclusion and acceptance of modern ways of doing business are very low in northern Nigeria.
The bulk of the economy of northern Nigeria is informal and agrarian, however, in the platonic sense of the Central Bank of Nigeria, they have a fiat policy of limiting cash withdrawals from banks to 5 million for corporate accounts and 500k for personal accounts per week. This policy is wrong on many fronts, especially for agrarian communities. Businesses have been strangled as a result of this policy.
A truck of sesame is around 49 million naira. To buy this volume of sesame from local markets, you have to change this huge amount to cash. Imagine buying just two trucks or more in a week! The most difficult task of buying agricultural produce today is neither price nor availability but cash mobilization. You would spend the best part of the week reaching out to big store owners and POS agents left, right, and center for cash. The irony of it is that you have to buy this cash. To get a million Naira in cash, you must be ready to part with 5,000 or more.
It is very easy for someone living in the comfort of Maitama or Ikoyi to pontificate on why the rural people should accept bank transfers and whatnot without appreciating the privileges of dealing with people who, even though they are less educated, are exposed to the basics of operating mobile phones and are used to seeing everyone accepting bank transfers. For rural people, that’s an exception. Most of them are not literate (in the Western sense of it) and skeptical about banking in general. This is in addition to the cumbersome nature of operating bank apps.
The highlighted challenges above are easier to solve compared to having a good appreciation and understanding of the economy of typical rural people. The whole economy of a typical rural person is tied to his harvest in that particular year. His budget of myriad things to do within the year, e.g., buying a new motorcycle, mending a roof, or marrying off of his daughter or son, is built on the reality of his total harvest of that particular year.
Thus, he only brings his harvest to market when there is an immediate need to attend to. And that immediate need means the conversion of his maize to roofing sheets or Kchibo radio. Since trade by barter is no longer tenable, he needs cash to allocate to various things he wants to buy in the same market he sold his maize. A typical rural person doesn’t count his wealth on the savings he has in a bank but on the number of bags he has in a store or heads of cattle.
Another misunderstanding and wrong assumption of our policymakers is the assumption that rural people sell their harvest in bulk. No. Rural people sell in pieces. In a typical rural market, if, for example, you want to buy a truck of maize, which is about 400 bags, it will be extremely rare to buy twenty bags from one person. You will, most likely, buy all the four hundred bags in 2s, 3s, 4s, etc. from as many people as a hundred people. Life would have been terribly difficult if for every 50,000 or less transaction I needed to log into my bank account. It is sheer lunacy to go against a tide.
Modernity will always have its way. Rural people will most certainly evolve, but evolution is methodical and strategic. It would amount to grand idiocy to think of installing the iOS or Android operating system on a Nokia 3310.
A quick win, however, is to bring back adult evening classes that would provide functional education and, of course, make bank operations less cumbersome.
#EditedByDipoTeniola
