Market women open up on cashless policy

One year after the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced the cashless policy in Lagos, it has decided to extend the policy to other states, including Abuja, Abia, Anambra, Ogun, Kano and Rivers. It is against this background that the opinions of some Lagosians were sampled and these are their reactions.




Frozen foodseller—Mrs Oluwakemi Kushimo

The policy has a lot of benefits for the people and the economy, and I think it should be embraced without fear.

With the policy, it is mandatory for banks to confirm cheques of over N500, 000 to protect the interest of the person that issued the cheque. So for me, the policy is really helping us marketers because if you want to buy goods worth N1million you don’t need to go with cash. All you need is an e-Transfer. But the challenge is poor network. Sometimes you will have to stay in the bank for hours . But aside from that, the cashless policy is okay because even the company we buy goods from doesn’t collect cash.

Wholesale cloth seller  —Mrs Kudirat Yusuf

To me, naturally, it’s very risky to move around with huge amounts of money because doing that means risking my life.

So the cashless policy is a good idea from the government because many people have been robbed as a result of moving around with huge sums of money to buy goods. It is helping us too. We now send money to the account of the company we buy clothes from and once they get the alert, the next thing they do is bring our goods to us. So the idea is okay and I will advise my co-marketers to buy into the idea too.


Tomato seller —Mrs Fatima Oribamishe

It’s not that easy, but we are managing because sometimes these Hausa people don’t really like the idea of someone paying into the bank for them .So what we do is we look for the literate ones among them who have bank accounts, then we transfer from our account to theirs before they agree to sell to us.

So the cashless policy is good because we are no longer scared of travelling to the North to buy goods with cash, unlike before when we used to go with cash and sometimes some of us would get  robbed on the way. But thank God for the new idea from government. At least our mind is now settled anytime we are going to buy goods.


Vanguard