It is pellucid that Godwin Emefiele is Nigeria’s Central Bank governor only in arts and not in acts otherwise, how can you be destroying an economy you were employed to build?
The inflicted harms of current cash scarcity in the country will take a long time to be corrected.
THE BANKS:
To the best of my knowledge, doors of banking halls across the country in the last six weeks and more had been shut. As I speak, most banks are not opened for normal activities. Banks in highly sensitive areas like those with proximity to motor parks and markets are most unlikely to open at all. Going round town, you see crowds gathered, not because the banks don’t want to open to attend to them but because there’s simply no cash to disburse. When banks whose main operation is to trade in money don’t have money to trade all because of Emefiele’ insensitivity, what Emefiele is doing is killing the banks and nothing more.
Please note that these banks would have to pay salaries to their staffers. Please where will that come from? Some will have to pay rents and some dues to the governments for the space they occupy. Besides, they will pay for electricity to keep their online platforms on despite reduced activities. Did Emefiele think of all these at all? What kind of human being is he?
At the end of this whole thing, even the strongest of the banks will be affected.
I know the efforts of First Bank to remain open. This is a bank with branches even in the hinterlands. To the best of my knowledge, First Bank had supported such branches with income from branches that are located in good places all because of the idea that banking services must be extended to all irrespective of location. How will such a bank survive now when the branches in the cities are not in operation?
Banks like Access and Zenith with widespread branch network too won’t be spared in all of these.
If tomorrow comes and we hear that these banks have started downsizing, don’t blame them, blame Emefiele- the killer of a system he was employed to build.
And to those of us in the capital market, just be ready for woeful 2023 Q1 earnings from the banks and because of these, the Full year 2022 reports might bring in good earnings. For the wise among the banks, dividend payout will be low so that they will conserve cash to take care of the losses of the Q1 and going forward. You can then imagine what the response will be at the market arena to their prices… and since banks dominate the stock market, do you know that this can crash the market?