Letters
The Cashless Policy Is Still A Flop.
Standard Policy Making requires or rather involves a number of stages during which the key issues are debated and negotiated before being finalized as a government policy or better still, before being passed as a law. It takes a slow process, requiring the “ground work” to be completed. The ground work here is to find out things like; will this policy fit the “people”? Are the infrastructures needed to make the policy work available and at the same time, sufficient? What are the likely challenges we may pass through during the implementation of this policy? How do we ensure that both parties, the aggregators and the people both benefit without difficulty, the value of this policy? Etc.
If for instance, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), had done their ground work before coming up with the Cashless Policy (the one constituted during the time of former CBN governor, who is now Emir of Kano State, HRH Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi), it wouldn’t have been as failed as it is today. During the Internationl Conference on Payment System, organized by the CBN, I pointed out to them, where they missed it. Today, same policy is about going national, or has gone national without fixing the error that made it to fail the last time.
Most standard organizations, especially Central Banks, have a “Research and Development” department. If the definition and descriptive functions of the term is put to real use, then financial institutions will not have challenges executing their role in tandem with the specifications of the apex bank and the policy makers. By doing this, financial value chain will do its part where it’s directed and the people for whom the policy was made, will dividendly benefit.
When a rich policy is made, when a peoples policy is instituted, and enforcement after implementation is adequately carried out, the policy is sustained and the people for which the policy is made to help actually gets the benefits. Standard policy that takes note of the needed, provides in extension, an enabling environment for everything innovative, through entrepreneurship.
We believe, I believe, that when issues of this nature is discussed continuously, with adequate solution proffering, the unknowledgeable, gains the knowledge to engage their leaders, their Policy Makers.
