Quick one on the crowded banks

I’ve seen a lot of commentary about the crowds at banks in Lagos today, and while it is truly tragic as this will almost definitely lead to a huge spike in cases of the disease here, there should be a bit of time taken to understand qhat went down.

First, we live in a cash society. Truth is that the CBN’s recent policies have all but killed the much-vaunted Operation Cashless. I’ve talked about this recently, so should it surprise anyone that many people made a run for the banks?

I’m not quite sure of the numbers, but a lot of people don’t have ATM cards, and back to the demise of Operation Cashless, oh well.

Still on ATM cards, many cards have expired. Until today I fell into that category. The difference was that I had the luxury of finding out what branches of my bank would be open today, and then after selecting a branch that I deemed would not be crowded, I was in front of that branch by 0800 today. I was right.

For those who are still fortunate to have a job, most people had their salaries paid at the tail end of last week, and today is the first working day after a three day weekend and the first day that many bank branches are opening in five weeks. Some people were paid their salaries today…

Finally, network issues have been a pain, and another pain is that the banks themselves have been playing fast and loose with withdrawal limits (₦10k from non-bank ATMs), so many people have been socialised into doing cash.

Basically, what we saw this morning is the culmination of years of incoherent policymaking and flip-flops. The pity is that it will end in tears. May God help us all.