Godwin Emefiele must think himself a great economist and stylist. Or maybe he sees himself as a sort of reincarnation of Steve Jobs, the Apple avatar who brought design to the service of technology. Mefi, as his acolytes call him, must believe he wants to bring style to the service of the economy.
So, to do this, he goes to the president, and tells him it is an elixir of good news. Mop up the naira and the politicians who stashed away money will groan. It will smoke out bandits from their barricades. The naira will neigh like a robust horse. Inflation will bow. The common folk will renew “Sai baba” chants. His unsung legacy on song.
Then he, the naïve maven, announces it. The naira flies off the handle. By the last check, it is a little chasing 900. But he thinks it will all blow away. But a topsy-turvy policy meets topsy-turvy market. It is what Fela calls dead body get accident.
It is also a clash between the fiscal and monetary. Mefi handles monetary. The rest lies in the hands of the economic team with the budget directors, the finance minister, et al. Finance minister denies knowledge, even though her permanent secretary is on the CBN team. Did Mefi act without consulting, or did the finance minister deny as a show of protest?
But Mefi, a naïve economist, sells an idea. Muhammadu Buhari, not a naïve economist but no economist at all, romanticises it. He is like a little boy eyeing a shop of lollypops. The prospect of the decision: politician’s feet in heady scramble to banks, or bureaux to change and bandits running out of cash. What a great morning in Nigerian ethics. What a wonder. What a populist hour.
But then he did not ask the right question: what is the cost? Trillions to mop up trillions? How much is the money in the banks and how much are we chasing? A N47 trillion economy looking for about three trillion.
What are the statistics, though, of the politicians’ money outside? No numbers. Of the money with bandits? No data. As for inflation, how do you spend trillions of naira to capture trillions of naira? Where is the antidote to inflation? An economist without number. Pythagoras will swear at Mefi? Did the Greek philosopher not say civilisation depends on numbers?
Now we are seeing two funny things at play – the conflict between economics and society and the conflict between law and society. The former is catching up with the latter.
Regarding the law, EFCC launched raids of bureaux de change, and arrested quite a few operators. On what law did they do that? Are people not supposed to patronise the bureaux de change, and are the bureaux not supposed to oblige? Apparently, they did not anticipate this. Poor EFCC. The agency will have to scramble to justify why those who were doing their jobs are doing it. No doubt, there will be scramble, and there are thieves who want to ferret their money out of dungeons: burial grounds, cesspits, houses built as vaults, deep freezers. Whatever the fortunes of these raids, how will that affect the larger economy?
For one, we do not know whether the politicians have more errant cash than the informal market? If our economy is largely informal, logic suggests that a lot of money skulk under-beds, pillow cases, bags, cupboards, inside bras and blouses.
Many of them hate banks. They coy at digitalisation. If, in the end, they get their money into the banking system, will the money remain there? Not a chance. They will only replace their money with the new ones, and cash returns to familiar habitats in bras and cupboards. So, we have merely effected a merry-go-round, a futile rigmarole.
Also, as markers of the conflict of economics and society, dislocations are coming from climate change and flood as well as the insecurity and fear of movement. With flood affecting 22 states of the federation, many people are out of the loop of the so-called modern economy with its financial institutions. How will those cooking Kosei in Jigawa or Ogbono soup in Bayelsa access banks wiped out of contention by the unthinking might of a flood? Or an ancient town like Lokoja. With the fear of bandits in the shadows of northern bushes, how are the men and women who own fifty thousand naira as life savings, or even less, going to trust the streets between their homes and their banks? How sure is the trader with N20 million in the Southeast that the local militias will not mark him out on his way to his bank?
What Mefi has done is to invent a puzzle inside a confusion. The result is chaos. The January 31st deadline will ultimately be postponed, and that will inevitably still fall in the hands of the politician he is trying to upend. You don’t want to heal the whole by killing a part. In the end, the whole dies.
Advanced economies redesign currencies in part, and they do it in formalised systems. So, it is easy for the money to return “home.” But we are doing this in a largely informal economy, and we want the result of a formal economy. Former French statesman and Prime minister Georges Clemenceau once said, “war is too important to be left in the hands of generals.” Echoing him during the 1982 world recession, Henry Kissinger wrote that “the economy is too important to be left in the hands of economic experts.”
Mefi is trying to conjure a miracle without being a god. He is a prophet without the gift of prophecy. Mefi does not understand the economy. No one knows an economy who does not know the society. Economies are slaves of culture. A purist economist from Harvard will lu le if he does not first study the society. That is the theme of the great economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi in his classic, The Great Transformation.
Mefi, who thought he was the Emilokan candidate of the Buhari establishment, was sorely disappointed after his mock rice pyramid campaign and many posters. He is perhaps on a revenge mission against his political foes.
But this is not a way to do it. Maybe his personal ego is at stake. It is the life of a whole country. He will give contracts for this decision, and quite a few persons will benefit while trillions flush the economy into an Emefiele inflation. He may hear hallelujah from his amen corner today. But the hungry will be the last testament.
If Mefi thinks he is following the principle of creative destruction by economic theorist Joseph Schumpeter, his shock is just starting.
Maybe, his aim is beauty. As Pastor Adeboye has noted, maybe he wants to beautify the naira and become the great artist of the Nigerian economy. Beauty, wrote Dostoyevsky, will save the world. Not Mefi’s beauty.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected colomunist with the Nation Newspaper
