By Ibe Ikwechegh
The news media is awash with stories of the arrest of Oluwadarasimi Omoseyin, an actress and cosmetologist for allegedly spraying and stepping on the new Naira Notes, an offence, the authorities say is contrary to Section 21 of the CBN Act 2007. It is reported on one hand that she offered the new Naira notes for sale on social media and on another note that she was arrested after the video of her spraying and stepping on the newly redesigned Naira notes at a party surfaced online. It is believed that the authorities would charge her when, supposedly, they have all their evidence down. The section 21 already referenced says that ‘a person who tampers with a ..note is guilty…’ Then the next paragraph says that the note is deemed tampered if impaired, diminished, lightened, engraved, mutilated torn, squeezed, etc. Then its paragraph 3 specifically spoke of spraying the notes or dancing or matching on it.
In the document, A Brief On The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Act, 2007, put together by the Legal Services Division of the Central Bank, it states at its paragraph 8 titled ‘Abuse of Naira’ that; ‘In order to stem the abuse that the Naira is constantly subjected to, increase the active life of the Naira notes and coins, and promote confidence in their usage as medium of exchange, refusal to accept the naira, trading in naira notes and coins, spraying of the Naira and all such abuses have been criminalized and appropriate sanction imposed.’
And so, spraying the naira notes specifically is considered an abuse of the Naira. But how so? It is not hard to understand that any government would be interested in preserving the lifespan of the money once printed. It would amount to economic sabotage if each batch of money printed would not really make much rounds and subject the printing and minting mill continually busy, unduly re-printing money with its consequential costs. But how does spraying of money abuse it so much so that it shortens its active lifespan?
To begin with, it has never been shown that monies sprayed constitute any significant ratio of monies in circulation. That is to say, a very insignificant portion of monies printed was ever sprayed. Money spraying has come to become the culture of the people of Nigeria and they will do so at wedding ceremonies where they would spray the bride and the groom. Same as burial ceremonies and other ceremonies where people are merry and would spray at the celebrant or even on one another. These activities are organized to accommodate spraying. These monies are typically sprayed on people’s bodies and not on burning furnaces. They fall to the floor and are picked by the beneficiaries or those appointed for that purpose. It is hard to see at what point in the chain of spraying and ultimately picking that the monies suffer any type of abuse. If anything, those spraying them and those upon which they are sprayed have great interest in seeing that it retains useable form or else it would be useless to the beneficiaries. Money is an inanimate object and so unlike, for instance, a baby that one might say that the act of throwing by itself amounts to abuse, throwing monies in so far as they do not reduce their active life nor depreciate confidence in their use as medium of exchange cannot reasonably be held to have been abused.
Omoseyin’s arrest which may put section 21 of the CBN Act to test came at a time when millions of Nigerians are facing unprecedented hardship. Naira has been redesigned or put more poignantly, has been re-colored. Many have no access to the money. Most countries redesign their monies with the old ones remaining legal tender. This way, when the old notes make it to the banks they do not come out again, making the transition seamless. But here is not the case. There is a deadline of so short a time for turning in billions which had been in circulation among more than 200 million Nigerians and yet there does not seem to be anything near enough to facilitate the exchange. And so, it is not impossible to see how a government grappling with the difficulties in which it has plunged itself as a result of low-grade planning, would in its frustration turn to chase the ‘mice when its house is on fire’. It is not far from the blame game tradition that has for so long bedeviled governance so that accountability takes backstage and blame shifting becomes sublime. We can fancy a government spokesperson telling us how it is some among us who have frustrated the transition by spraying and dancing on the new notes thereby causing a great shortage.
If the government in true perspicacity resolves to find why the Naira notes suffer abuse, why the notes are all too soiled sometimes with grease and oil and the monies folded many times that just one next tender touch would reap them apart, it would, by simple candor and sincerity to itself.
Depletion of the value is one very good reason why money suffers reduced active life. Money is generally printed on high-quality paper that is designed to wear well and be used for a long time. But this quality is constantly challenged where there is always a need to carry so much of it at all times. For instance, slipping a one-hundred-dollar bill in one’s wallet cannot be compared with stuffing in its equivalent of eighty thousand naira in one’s back pocket. Here is a wad of eighty notes or one hundred and sixty notes or even more depending on the denomination. It is so easy to see how a devalued money makes it imperative to bundle in so much of it into our tight pockets and pouches. Many Nigerians no longer know what wallets look like; it is not meant for an economy such as ours.
It has been suggested that a cashless economy would address the problems of hauling so much cash wherever we go, but there is yet no infrastructure for our government’s cashless policy. What the average man understands cashless economy to mean is that Automatic Teller Machines have replaced the cashier at the bank for indeed that’s all the difference we see. We still need to take the cash out for our shopping, because the average trader there does not have POS, and those who have, find them grossly unreliable. A woman cried home because she had swiped her card to withdraw money to feed the family and the POS won’t show approved or the ATM won’t dispense and yet she would have been debited. With no access to funds, she would have to wait till the next working day to complain and then wait for another week or more or even indefinitely for the problem to be resolved. So, in the interim, what happens to her hungry children? Tales like this are commonplace. Many who are travelling have been stranded for placing faith on the so-called cashless economy. Electronic payment of money is not guaranteed. A bank teller saying, ‘Madam, we don’t have network’ is almost a familiar incantation. There is a complete system’s failure to implement, support, or sustain our cashless policy. And so, cash would continue to swelter around, enduring the worst but inevitable form of abuse.
We would leave out, for now, the fact that many, for fear of cyber theft of their monies, a crime that the government has failed to protect its citizens from, store their monies at home. This may well be in humid and damp conditions.
It is these system failures that have created an environment where overhandling of cash has become imperative.
We shall look forward to what the judge may say when Omoseyin would be hounded in before him. A textualist judge may insist that section 21 of the CBN Act 2017, speaks of spraying money and so that by itself is an abuse and thus it would not matter if the money was gently sprayed and caught with wool gloves. Maybe a pragmatic judge would like the case to be adorned with some analysis of how Omoseyin’s spraying of money has indeed made the particular notes sprayed lose its ‘active life’ or lose ‘confidence in its usage’. I guess that may involve tendering the very notes involved in the episode and examining the abuse done to it.
We just can never be certain what outcome to anticipate if the case goes to trial, but one thing that is certain is that whichever way the case may go, the public is not unaware of the real factors that make our naira notes look so dilapidated and invariably who the real culprits are.
Chief Ibe Ikwechegh is a Lawyer, Consultant at Indent, and Law & Society Magazine Columnist.
