Return of Naira Merchants

Saturday 3rd July is the day. Ketu garage is the spot. The journey from Akoka to Ketu was hurriedly taken; devoid of stop-overs and street trading – when you are late you are late, there is no need window shopping for a bribe to appease those waiting for your belated arrival. As I hurry to catch a bus heading for Ijebu Igbo, I was overwhelmed by the thought of how (un)smooth or rough the journey would be (for certain, the stretch named OGD Boulevard across Ilishan is going to be rough).
However, in the depth of my thoughts, one distraction caught my fancy. As much as I tried, I could not resist writing about it. The naira merchants are back at work. Until now, one had thought the Charles Soludo administration as Central Bank of Nigeria’s governor had tactically eradicated the bad idea of selling mint naira notes on the streets by changing all easily tattered  low naira denominations to polymer notes and making them widely available to the citizenry through the banks among other strict regulatory and policy measures.
 The contrary now seem the case as the polymer notes are now up for sale – attracting higher premium than old mint paper notes. After all, we were told polymer notes are more expensive to produce and designed to last longer. Seated comfortably at the garage were two middle aged women with big bags stuffed with new polymer notes. Obviously and strangely so, there are displayed for sale. I helplessly watched as co-travellers buy some to be “sprayed” in parties.
 Ten minutes later, the writer in me overcame the patriotic me. I ordered for one thousand naira worth of twenty naira notes. In a jiffy, I had my order but at a cost. The naira merchants demanded for two hundred naira (twenty percent) premium on one thousand naira transaction! It used to be one hundred naira premium per thousand. This “Öwambe craze” is costly – but I have no choice but to console myself.
My granny likes new notes; she would have these as gift to offer to others. Sadly, she need not know handsomely I’ve paid to disobey the law – a career writer would have returned the notes (feigning unsatisfactory bargain). For me, that idea crossed my mind much later as I galloped up and down on Gbenga Daniel Boulevard far away in Ogun State.