People in Nigeria have taken to sleeping outside banks. They want to be among the first in line to get notes from the cash machine once it is loaded up in the morning.
A lack of newly designed naira notes has led to a cash shortage and a growing sense of anxiety among those desperate to get hold of their money in a country where 40% of the population don’t have bank accounts.
The Supreme Court has even become involved and has ordered that the deadline to hand in old notes be extended but this has made little difference.
People here have long been used to the periodic bouts of fuel shortages leading to long lines of cars snaking from the petrol stations. But now long lines of frustrated, confused and angry people have become a common sight outside banks as the country builds up to a presidential election at the end of the month.
“I have not eaten today,” says Abraham Osundiran, 36, as he stands in one of two queues at a bank in Ikoyi, a district in the country’s main commercial hub, Lagos.
He has had to miss work at a construction company for a second day because he does not have the cash to pay the taxi fare. Some Nigerians have embraced digital payments, but many still rely heavily on cash.
“I don’t have any cash. I’ve had to skip breakfast so I could come here, and I don’t know what I will eat for the rest of the day.”
It is a similar situation for many others.
“It’s painful. I can’t go to the market, because they want cash. Buses want cash – now I have to trek everywhere,” hairdresser Lilian Ineh, 26, tells the BBC from her salon.
“There’s no money to buy stock, so I have less products to sell. There are even less customers. Usually on a Saturday I have a minimum of five.”
Last Saturday, she only had two.
Nigerians were told last October that the old notes were being replaced with new notes and they were encouraged to deposit any cash savings in the bank.
“They made us put all our money into our accounts, and now we can’t access it. It’s unbearable,” says Osarenoma Kolawole, 40. She works in telesales, but has not been able to access her salary since getting paid last week.
“The last time I went to the shops, I had to buy eggs instead of fish – that really hurt me – not the food, but having to buy what I didn’t want to, just because the banks won’t let me get my money.”
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said it redesigned the higher denomination notes – 200, 500 and 1,000 naira – to replace the dirty cash in circulation, to tackle inflation, curb counterfeiting and promote a cashless society.
It hoped the redesign would bring some of the money being hoarded by individuals and companies back into the financial system.
The reform has created something like a cashless society – but not in the way the CBN had planned.
People have been finding it difficult to make online payments and transfers. Analysts say the infrastructure to support a digital system is not robust enough.
“The whole idea was to limit how much cash people have access to, in order to encourage them to make digital payments, so they [CBN] can monitor where money goes,” says Paul Alaje, a senior economist at management consultants SPM Professionals.
“But Nigerian banks don’t have the capacity or structure to make digital payments work seamlessly.”
The CBN has not said whether the shortages are deliberate.
“The government has been trying to move the country into a cashless economy for ages,” argues policy analyst and economist Yemi Makinde.
“Its intention is good, but it is just not feasible, the banking systems were not ready and Nigeria is just used to cash.”
When announcing the redesign, the CBN said the new notes would begin circulating from 15 December and the old notes would cease to be legal tender at the end of January.
The bank then extended the deadline to last Friday. But the Supreme Court stepped in and suspended this deadline but the queues outside banks remain.
