New Naira Notes: Understanding El-Rufai’s Articulations and Distinctions While Enacting STAPOLITICS versus NAPOLITICS

If anyone wants to understand how African politics is being played during the election cycle from multi-dimensional perspectives with possible severe consequences for the people at the bottom of the pyramid, Nigeria would be an appropriate country to consider because of the difficulty in understanding and appreciating her political tricks before and during elections. It is a country with politicians without clear ideologies who always create new political terms during competitive political games. The ongoing power play among political actors and commercial banks with citizens over the scarcity of the new naira notes has added stapolitics and napolitics into the country’s political discourse.

According to our analyst, stapolitics is a process of making decisions that address people’s socioeconomic challenges in times of financial insecurity due to the shortage of new currency notes using state apparatuses. Napolitics, on the other hand, signifies the national government’s continuous intent to maintain the initial guidelines for implementing a new currency redesign with a little tweak of how the old currency notes should circulate along with the old ones without absolute consideration of the pain people are experiencing.

As captured in the previous piece, our analyst uses Kaduna State’s governor’s speech to conceptualise these terms with the specific adoption of articulation, disarticulation and distinction techniques. Six-hundred and ninety-seven words from the governor’s speech that resonate with the need to make critical decisions at the state level over the issues associated with the new currency swap are analysed. Analysis shows that while governor Nasiru El-Rufai articulates the right ways of implementing the policy, citing how other countries are implementing the same policy, he disarticulates the federal government’s and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s approaches, suggesting that both are not following global practices. Therefore, his government needs to take critical decisions on how people should access and spend their money. His references to some elements in the presidency and behind the forceful implementation of the policy are constructed as enemies of the people. Therefore, they should not be allowed to create chaos and destabilise existing peace.

Exhibit 1: Decision Tree

1. On behalf of the government of Kaduna State, I wish to express my deepest regret at the needless suffering you are enduring as a result of the prolonged fuel shortage and the difficulties occasioned by the so-called “currency redesign” policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria. We understand your pain. I assure you that as your State Governor, I have been working with my other colleagues to do everything in our power to end these pains.

With this statement, Governor El-Rufai believes that people are being forced to experience unnecessary suffering by making the two important essentials unavailable to them. He uses “the so-called currency design” as a technique for downplaying the importance of the policy, which the president and the governor of the apex bank have emphasised since 2022. In this context, he disarticulates his opponents in order to provide his distinction in terms of aligning with the people in his state with the intention of making them realise that he is on the side of the masses.

2. It is important for the people of Kaduna State, and indeed Nigeria, to know that contrary to the public pronouncements and apparent good intentions, this policy was conceived and sold to the President by officials who completely lost out in the Gubernatorial and Presidential Primaries of the APC in June 2022.

Here, he doesn’t believe that president owns the policy idea. He attributes the policy to public officials who lost the primary elections of the ruling party with the agenda of disciplining and punishing the winners of the primaries.

3. I am referring here to the comments by the candidate of one of the opposition parties who expressed opposition to the recommendation first of the APC state governors, and subsequently of all the governors under the auspices of the Nigeria Governors Forum that the implementation timeline be extended, to enable the old and new notes to be legal tender side by side until the cash shortage ends.
4. My dear people of Kaduna State. Let me explain how the architects of this policy intentionally designed it to fail. The total currency in circulation in Nigeria was estimated at N3.2 trillion at the end of 2022. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria, N2.1 trillion has been withdrawn as at early February. The CBN claimed that N700bn is the amount of cash needed for their functioning vision of a “cash-less” Nigerian economy. The Chief Economic Adviser to the President, Dr. Doyin Salami disagrees with this estimate, and believes at least N2 trillion of currency needs to be in circulation for our economic sustainability. Other experts variously estimate this to be between N1.2 trillion and above, so the CBN number of N700bn is not realistic.
5. It is unfortunate that in implementing this policy, Nigeria is departing from global best practise, without any compelling justification. The Kaduna State Government did all these, not in opposition to any person or authority, but because we stand with our people and their interests.
6. When it was clear that our recommendations will not be seriously considered, the Kaduna State Government decided, along with the governments of Kogi and Zamfara States to declare a dispute with the Federal Government. In line with the provisions of the Constitution, we approached the Supreme Court of Nigeria to invoke its original jurisdiction to hear us and the cries of our people.
7. There is no emergency situation that justifies the rushed and seemingly deliberate incompetent execution of this policy. We suggested that compliance with the ruling would include adopting a whole-of-government approach, that involves the agencies of the federal and state governments in modifying the design, execution the implementation of the currency redesign policy.

While the federal government and the apex bank believe there is an emergency situation, citing the reduction of monetary inducement during elections, Governor El-Rufai plays the role of an antagonist here. His view suggests that the artificial emergency situation created by the federal government and the apex bank is contributing to the poor implementation of the policy.

8. But back home, what do we do in Kaduna State? My dear of people of Kaduna State, with the foregoing revelations, it is clear that our peaceful coexistence as a state, and a nation, is being placed under deliberate danger using the intentional combination of fuel and cash supply disruptions. These evil people using the instrumentality of the Federal Government and the President as convenient covers are willing to truncate our democracy because they have personally lost out. They are massively deploying resources and tools to defeat the political party that gave us the platform to serve the country just because they could not impose the candidates of their choice. Let us not help them.

He reaffirms his antagonistic role further by articulating the elements as evil people who want to create problems in order to destabilise existing peace and particularly destroy the platform that helped him and the elements serve the country. Seeing them as evil people suggests that the ruling party has a number of disgruntled internal elements capable of denying the party victory during the 2023 presidential election.

9. For the avoidance of doubt, all the old and new notes shall remain in use as legal tender in Kaduna State until the Supreme Court of Nigeria decides otherwise. I therefore appeal to all residents of Kaduna State to continue to use the old and new notes side by side without any fear. The Kaduna State Government and its agencies shall seal any facility that refuses to accept the old notes as legal tender and prosecute the owners. If need be, we shall take further consequential actions according to the law.