Topic: CBN to stop circulation of Naira note (Read 579 times)

Did all the businessmen and women know how to use the enaira? Most of them can not use ecurrency because they are computer illiteracy. CBN devalues the nairra to boost the country's economy but ironically the Americans were more wiser than the Nigerian Government. The world order says, Nigeria should consume while the developed countries should produce.

I don't think it would have any effects for CBN to enforce businessmen and  women go into eNaira. First what was their plans?
Is the Naira devaluation the cause of all the problems for not growing? No.
Nigeria should move from consumption country to a productive country this will help to foster the development. The Government always try's to implement what could give them more avenue to loot from the poor masses, which is the greatest problem every country would like face if not elect sound and educated leaders into power.

Lastly I think the ruling party and leaders those in power are old enough to be retired to give a young vibrant youths to seat to know the best structure the country needs and wants.

I find this already irksome my lenses hurt badly not too talk of how I had migraine seeing such a shitty hell stuff's. It's laughable you know
Go behind them houses and see how they store huge bucks of paper currency at their store and homes. I have seen with my own eye's how can someone store bunch of racks in a pit latrine ? If I get such funds, my third generation would never experience turbulence.

A country that has internal issues with power supply, a country that fights he/ her citizens for holding and having smartphones, indirectly tagging everyone as a scammer. Imagine a thief funding EFCC so they would stay clear of he's stolen Wealth! Next year Gon be the presidential election let's watch and see how they abuse the paper fiat buy vote's.

Old fvcknn fvckers.... Lmfao  Do well to understand Nigeria, how they operate and you're good to go. Every country has its own issues but Nigeria ? Abeg make ornah catch Cruse else 9ja go kill us before out time. ( Pigin ) In conclusion, all they've said are totally crap, they can't I repeat can't stop it.

Let me play the devil's advocate here and that's me saying that the double speak of the Nigerian government on the issue you pointed out could be from them not truly having a complete grasp of what cryptocurrency is, and not because they genuinely want to. This present administration run by the APC government of Mohammadu Buhari seems to be the worst of all administrations bereft of knowledge of economics. Those who are supposed to be manning the economy aren't up and doing and as such can't properly advise the president on what to do. Two figure inflation has hit Nigeria and all of them are acting like nothing is amiss because whether they get the country out of it or not, they still get their salaries. It's a shame.

BTW, speaking from both sides of the mouth is what politicians all over the world do. However, it's worse in Africa because citizens aren't holding their leaders accountable to their words and actions.

I'm not from Nigeria and the middle what you're talking about is a government, since they're ban usage of crypto and using their own digital currency e.g. E-Naira pegged with Naira. There's nothing suspicious behind this since we all know government only want to have full control of anyone life e.g. personal information, money and so on. Since crypto is a competitor of their own CBDC, they're banning the crypto to make all their citizens to use E-Naira.

Coins cannot get ripped off however it still can get dirty and can consume some space, they can remove it as well together with the paper and switch to digital instead. Not only that it won't have the disadvantage that we list earlier but it is also more friendly to the environment.

Now, there's no need to cut trees anymore or mine limited materials from the earth only to mint coins though the only problem is the poor or the uneducated people. How can they be able to cope up with this change? Unless if someone provides them the things that is needed and educated them on how to use this new digital currency. If finally they are involved with it, there's a chance that they will find out and use a crypto soon.

If you are from Nigeria, then you should know a lot more about it. I wanted to ask, just recently they had a situation where they were considering to ban the usage of crypto, or at least some people said so, I do not know much about it, could you talk about what happened there?

I mean last year there were talks about Nigeria banning all exchanges and everyone moved to p2p, today we are talking about something like going full digital, there must have been something in the middle that turned the whole nation like that. As someone who is not from there, it is a shocking development for just one year period, looks a bit suspicious to be fair.

Paper currency gets dirty, it takes place, can get ripped apart or lost. So taking it out of the circulation makes some sense, especially after the pandemic made people more aware and sensitive to the infections around us and taking measures to avoid catching them. That, however, doesn't show anything pro-crypto, I agree, as it's a push towards a CBDC.
What concerns me is that only half of the population has Internet access, and the rate of population having smartphones is also around a half . The percentage of banked population is less than a half, but close.
My question is how, under such circumstances, it's possible to move away from cash. The good thing about cash is that anyone can use it. But digital money requires certain things, and if half of the population don't have them, it's a big problem.

This is well said!
How can a country be claiming to go digital and rule out the existing currency in circulation where the economy is nothing to write home about and their students have been made to remain at home for over 4 months now owning to the fact that the government cannot afford to pay her workers their stipends.
Btw I am a native of that country and believe me when I say this "Nigeria does not have what it takes to go digital"

Well said that being a politician you will end up with some problem or you begin to do things in corrupt mind but the system of some more democratized nations are more sane in nature, there laws are allowed to catch and punish corrupt officials because they build their system on institution and rule of law but most African countries are not following that part. They are mostly operating family kind of government where friends and family members are pardoned for abusing the law.

Politics generally is a game of interest, this is why the Republicans will always want to win ahead of the democrats. The problem in Nigeria is that the mentality of our politicians has been programmed to be corrupt and not just about their political party interest anymore. Even though we're been ruled by one party, provided the country was moving forward then the citizens would had been satisfied but that's not the case as no matter the party that emerge the country keep moving backwards in everything.

Other countries including that of our neighboring states have a system that puts the interest of the country first but we don't have that as even to emerge a winner in any position no matter how small, you have to bribe your way in with thousands of dollars. E-naira came into existence because the government are looking for ways in which to tap into the digital currency market as such they'll be looking for ways to achieve that even though it has to do with damaging the reputation of bitcoin in the process. In regards to reducing the Naira circulation, that's basically impossible and the government knows this, they're just looking for ways to drive up interest in their "centralised so called better bitcoin" and it's already a failure.

Every nation has a lot of trouble with their politicians, that is the nature of politics. I mean if you are interested in politics and want to be a politician, then there is a good chance that you will end up with a problem, no regular person would want to be a politician and succeed if they are normal, only the ones who are corrupt will get high.

So, Nigeria is facing this issue, the people at the top could be corrupted, I do not know but I know politicians and almost all of them are corrupted, and this crypto deal and how they are approaching towards Naira could be because of this, if they are not making anything, why let it happen.

They are just hear nor there and taking the people for the ride. Now the important things are neglected because they want to conduct election and re-elect themselves back in while the schools are shut down because of payment of fees and whatnot. This is a painful situation in Nigeria that has the resources to make the people happy. They are particular about bringing the youth to a standstill. Jobs are not there after you have graduated from high institution, the youth can't contribute to national development yet the slogan is the youths are the leaders of tomorrow.

African banks can be so tiring and a big problem, should they think of how to reduce the poverty rate killing her citizens, rather than imposing more hectic stuff's, basic requirements are not provided the least Africa barely have access to a good phone not to talk about a good internet access and electrical power. I bid to the people of Nigeria not too fall for that cheap move, money laundering done are not been tackled yet they claim to impose shit.

You are right, however how many times we have seen politicians make moves that everyone but them knows they are wrong and yet they make those moves anyway? Nigeria and a great deal of countries around the world are not ready for a cashless society, but they are the ones that have the power and they can force people to try to become part of their experiment, and except for those that can see this and plan accordingly the rest of the population will be forced to participate in something they never asked to begin with.

How soon are they planning to phase the Naira note out? i thought the e-Naira was recently introduce by the Nigerian government! i doubt 90% of the Nigerian citizens are already aware of the e-Naira or how it works, if they stop circulation of Naira note and don't educate people more about e-naira especially the less privilege who are the majority can result to problems i.e if they will be true to what they just propose.

This is terrifying for their peeps! Know why? because they do not have enough infra and education to use the digital currency. How they are going to manage the payment if more than half population do not even care about smartphones. They cook starch and hunt chicken till today, they run for clean water and average living standards and their government wants to implement e-Naira and expect their peeps to accept it?

How?

This is completely messed up government authorisation. They literally trying to compete rest of the world without solving the basic problems of their peeps. They should run behind the countries development, make the naira strong against dollar and then somewhere they should "just think" about e-Naira. But now, now is bad.

I think that this is a "political declaration" i.e. lying/FUD.
I think that they just want to scare off the ones involved in crypto and those using paper money for evading taxes.

In most countries paper money is so vital it's not allowed by constitution (directly or indirectly) get phased out. And you know why? Because if they phase it out they will deny access to money to a vast segment of population (just because you cannot expect everybody have internet and electronic means of payment). I guess that's the same in Nigeria too.
So no, paper money will not go out of circulation that soon. Not so easy.

And about the double standards... as usual, I'll just say that it's a pity that you guys don't know better, it's a pity that you still have expectations from politicians to be fair. Get real!

This is  an attempt to make the people of Nigeria to be poor again. If none of them will hold BTC while the rest of the world does accept BTC, they are once again going to be with eNaira where its value still relies to the fiat system.

Mr Okafor is certainly misinformed because BTC is backed with energy. How come Mr Okafor is not informed about the different estates in US that is adopting BTC?

It would be another means for people to make use of bitcoin, peer-to-peer. Maybe barter can be common among those that are not literate enough to use bitcoin, or those that can not be able to afford to buy phone or people that are unable to subscribe data.

I guess and I think I am absolutely correct that CBN just wanted to make some people panic and use eNaira is the propaganda I only see about this and nothing more. Going cashless is not possible in Nigeria, absolutely not possible.

No any functional difference between eNaira and naira that are sent electronically.

Very huge.

I would guess nigerians might adopt a barter system in the event of paper money no longer being in circulation. Or perhaps a push for a cashless society could incentivize more nigerians to adopt cryptocurrency?

What is interesting to me is the lack of incentivizing options for anyone to use the CBDC. Nigerians gain nothing by using it. There are no advantages. No carrot. Only a stick. Will there be a public backlash? Or will they simply conform to CBDC demands.

What happens to businesses and jobs who can't afford to deploy CBDC infrastructure. The cash based industry in nigeria must be huge as it is in other countries.

I hope the people of nigeria do well for themselves.

It will take a long time before their country fully adopts e-naira or become fully digitalized with their currency. Most of the governments that are looking moving forward to digitalization are now eyeing CBDCs but in fact, there are better methods than adopting with this technology as if it's looking that they've adopted the crypto version of the government.

I understand you better now, but I still think theoretically it could be possible for a blockchain version of USD to exists along side the first version.
For such to work, it may be required for transitions between both to be seamless, maybe a built in function on banking apps where one can switch to a CBDC wallet and transfer directly on the blockchain. It would also be possible to use ATMs as normal on a blockchain version.

This of course is a hypothetical scenario and it would be more difficult in actual practice

Maybe El Salvador going straight to adoption of bitcoin while that of Nigeria is only trying to go digital on her fiat, this is only fanning the embers of total collapse of the economy when the naira goes away physically. Nigeria is not ready for such miracle to happen.

On what bases would the fiat go out of circulation when nothing to facilitate the use of CBDC is in reach or on sight. There are no steady power, it is largely epileptic when talking of power supply, low education of smartphone use etc. Nigeria has so much priorities not e-naira.

I get what you're saying, but I guess what I meant was that a government (let's say the US and its currency the USD) couldn't have a physical version of its currency and a CBDC version existing side-by-side.  If people in the US had the choice of using a government-issued cryptocurrency where all transactions are recorded on a blockchain forever or banknotes and coins, I think--and hope--that they'd choose the latter.  A government would basically have to make the CBDC mandatory if they were going to create one, else I don't think it would catch on.

That's an interesting monkey wrench potentially being thrown into the works, but other than that comment I don't know enough about Nigeria's government to say much more.  It just sounds like a completely authoritarian move, as the creation of any CBDC would be.

I just have a simple question for the CBN government about the e-Naira. Will there be a continuity of e-Naira if the present government leaves office by 2023? Cause the Nigerian government is always fond of abandoning ongoing projects when a new government takes over. Continuity is the major problem confronting the Nigerian government. Every new government in Nigeria has its policies to implement and endorse for her citizens. The new government that will take over by 2023 might even scramble this e-Naira they have spent millions in building or equally legalizing crypto at the end.

This is just one more example that shows perfectly that governments do not really care at all about their population, this is a move they are doing in order to bring benefits to themselves by trying to lure people to use CBDCs which are even worse than fiat, however I doubt they will succeed, to begin with I doubt that Nigeria has the infrastructure to pull off something like this, second their population probably does not trust the government at all, and finally those that use bitcoin and other altcoins are not going to be interested in using a CBDC that will track everything they do, especially when the government has demonstrated over and over again that they do not like that their citizens are using bitcoin instead of their useless fiat.

Another white elephant political statement. A country that have high rate of  illiteracy, low access to smartphones and high infrastructural deficit is talking about stopping the circulation of currency note. This means that majority of the Nigerian population would not have access to money. It would take most African countries decades before physical cash can be abolished. Many are not even bothered about owning a phone, they are just concerned about eating at-least two meals per day. Internet access is low and poor and the power sector is epileptic, how would e-naira operate. This statement it targeted at scoring a cheap political point for next years elections.    

Its not about going digital or introducing new methods of currency adoption. It is a question of can this be maintained? In 2009, the polymer note was introduced and the government put it into circulation and claimed it was a better way of extended the lifespan of #5, 10, 20 and 50 notes respectively, but now, these aforementioned currencies no longer have value and I ask why go through the stress of making it a polymer in the first place
 E-naira is the new Fiat and CBN is urging traders and marketers to embrace as it gives no room for fraud or counterfeit currencies.. is this really true?
 If the govt can just wake up and begin to bring these currencies into circulation, why can't crypto currency be given a chance?

This people rejected cryptocurrency and in 2020 and warm the central bank of Nigeria not to accept any cryptocurrency transaction and still want naira note to be made public and this is to show that telling people of naira is useless unless the rejected bitcoin for the country is return to normal and if they want to legalize cryptocurrency they should because no way cryptocurrency will be ban and some thing relating to cryptocurrency exist because it will not get support

That is true. But, to be specific, I mean in Nigeria. Poverty rate in Nigeria is high. Many people in Nigeria do not have money to live above the poverty line not to talk of buying non-browsing (cheap) phone, and many are illiterates.

In the state I am living in Nigeria, the villages I know very well, some people (most especially old people though) can not even use phone. Some people are poor and do not have phone or any other online device. Some people know how to use phone but prefer the simple ones because they can not browse or do anything online. And all what some people know is just paper money, they have never and they do not want to use any other than paper money which is the only one they are literate to. Many are just illiterate to anything online. Some people are not even having phone. I remember when I went to a state in the Northern part of Nigeria, it is even worse in the North.

I believe the CBN is out of its mind to say something like this, they only want to make some people use eNaira is all what they are doing because I believe they can not be so stupid to want to do what is not possible without making the poor citizens suffer. This will later lead to either the president to tell CBN to stop the nonsense, or the house of rep and senate to step in. Even if I am wrong, law suit will be filled against CBN which I know it can not win as it only wants to suffer the poor masses and deny them of using what they have right to use while illiterate to online money.

But I believe CBN will never do that but can reduce the printing of naira. What I meant by it would be beyond the power of CBN is because it is not the right time to stop printing naira, that they will fail if they want to stop that for now until the right time comes when almost everyone in the country will know how to spend naira electronically and by using eNaira.

Some are close, but without the actual ban on banknotes.
Sweden is near this point but it wasn't really a government decision that made it happen, more like people simply not wanting to carry cash anymore, this is to the point where some small businesses simply refuse clients with cash because it's too much of a headache for them.

But again, this is Sweden, not Nigeria, and more importantly, it was a choice made through decades by their own population, not something thought overnight by a select few.


Not necessarily.
It's not like they are two different currencies, there are just two faces of the same coin, there is one naira that is in paper and bank accounts and one e-naira that is some other wallets. Technically they could go like that forever, it's not really that different from having some $ on Paypal, they can be exchanged for $ in your bank account or for $  banknotes, same for the e-naira (in theory!).


Why do you say stopping the printing is beyond their power? They just shut down the presses and that's it no more banknotes.
And every government has just to wait till every banknote gets reclaimed from the population, it will simply gather them all one by one as you have to pay taxes, you will use those notes, you pay for gas for food, those businesses will be forced to deposit that cash every day at their bank, sooner or later there won't be any cash left or it will be too little that nobody will bother accepting it.

But!, that would work in a country where you can get 99% of the population to use a smartphone or a credit/debit card, not in Nigeria and not this decade.

This is almost exactly what the news means. Nigeria has their own CBDC called eNaira already. Delta State Branch Controller of CBN, Mr Godwin Okafor is not talking about naira that are transferred electronically but just only the paper naira, saying the money used for printing it is too much. So we can say they just want more means they will not print naira again or to reduce its printing. I think this should happen naturally than a threat from CBN in a way CBN should no more print naira again because people are not using it, but which is very unlikely in this era in Africa continent generally.

No, just paper naira.

It has been existing side by side and even CBDC is fiat. Nigeria is the first country I have heard this from and there have been reduction in circulation of naira when eNaira was created (I guess). All that was rumoured was that CBN were reducing paper naira in circulation at the time. I do not notice much reduction again recently as I can withdraw from ATM again just like before the eNaira was created, unlike when it was created.

The funniest thing is that, Nigeria's population is estimated to be over 200 million people, while at least, 10 million or more (just guess) will be using Android phones, but people that have downloaded the eNaira speed wallet are still less than 200 thousand people for over many months now. I think CBN are looking for means to make people use the failing eNaira.

I do not believe in CBN about this, they just want to cause panic to make people to use eNaira because many people will suffer this and stoping printing of money is beyond the power of CBN just like bitcoin total ban is beyond their power which is what they would have wanted.

If I guess right, the first form of fiat is in paper, later electronic means of fiat was created as a result of internet and devices available which can make its adoption to be successful. I do not see functional difference between fiat that can be transferred electronically like through credit cards and on devices using bank app or web if compared with CBCDs. All I can just say is that CBN present head officials are completely out of their mind.

The Nigerian government are most likely just blowing smoke. A purely digital economy is not feasible at this present point in time, so phasing out physical notes is not either. This is probably an attempt to draw more attention to the eNaira which has not taken off ever since it was launched.

Yes they can; El Salvador is a popular example. They recently adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender and still use their previous fiat currency; USD, with both co existing side by side;



Here's the link which contains the full list of Nations and their currency; there are some others there which uses two currencies side by side (not including a cryptocurrency) like Lesotho, Panama and Sahrawi republic which uses four different currencies.

---

Edit; (off topic discussion)
I can see from the screenshot above that the commonly used ISO code for Bitcoin is BTC or XBT.
I am aware that bitcoin is normally represented by three letters as BTC, but have never come across where it's represented as XBT.

On research, I discovered that XBT is result of ISO standards; that a currency not linked to any country, should be started with an 'X', hence XBT for Bitcoin and XAU for gold.
It seems a bit confusing as there's already a cryptocurrency using that acronym. And XBT is not used in practice as it's said to be on the list.

Lol.  Governments are kinda known for doing that--mine, yours, and probably all across the globe and throughout time for that matter.

So let me get this straight.  Nigeria is introducing a CBDC and ditching physical currency altogether?  Are they the first country to do this?  I don't really follow crypto news or global news for that matter, so I have no idea if anyone has actually done this yet.

Charles-Tim already posted this quote, but I have no idea what it means:


What about things like bank and debit cards?  Are those going to be replaced by this CBDC?  I'm not sure if that question sounds simpleminded or not, but I never considered how implementation of a CBDC would play out.  Now that I think about it, a country's currency would have to be either their new digital currency or their old one, physical or not.  They couldn't really exist side-to-side, could they?

Very nice comment from you Darker45. Everything that is achievable is in the data. The data you have today will determine what your tomorrow will be. Nigeria has no capacity to implement an all e-naira currency. It is laughable to me or it shows how the government threatens its citizens.
There are so many Nigerians who do not have access to smart phones and internet coverage, how will they cope with the situation.
I expected that a country like Nigeria will first implement e-voting before saying about e-naira.
Well, the government approves what favours her. An e-voting could prevent election rigging but e-naira will not prevent more minting of naira.

"Naira notes going out of circulation", am I getting this right or am not just following up on the point that was the intent here. They tend to talk about abuse, when the president ticket costs as much as $167,657, the equivalent of BTC5.7 with current market price in the ruling party and there you have them in few weeks politicians rushing to pick forms and make there declarations. In a nation where the students are left at home to roam the street due to the on going strike of the governing body of universities ASUU for over 4months already and counting. This is hardly the problem of Nigeria at the moment.

How do they expect those in the rural area to be familiar and make use of the e-Naira when they haven't been familiar with the basic devices for this not to think of owning one. It's unheard of what is going on and about happening in Nigeria. The fiat currency is hardly the problem of this country but, the status people whole have stolen away our democracy to operate an autocracy form of government where an out going leader gets to instole a predecessor using the same voting procedure for a shill.

Where a president can act as a minister while occupying the highest office in the country. They award contacts for themselves and live it partly finished with a budget that accommodated surplus. There is no abuse on the currency and the CBN shouldn't complain on what they spend on printing notes. Rather they should beacon on agencies responsible to put corruption in check to carry out there duties judiciously while ensuring that capital intensive projects are duly completed. This would aid the economy more than they looking for a way to reserve more money to be siphoned by some dirty public office holder.

Modern paper currency is only IOU written down in fancy writing anyway, there is no promise or contract to pay any value in exchange.  Arent most currencies digital anyway, the vast majority of the value circulated is from balance sheet to balance sheet and never printed.    I cant see it will make any real difference long term, normally they withdraw a particular note for forgery/security updates or just simply the notes wear out perhaps but since most paper is only token value and the central bank does as it wishes without any control or balance does it alter much for the common person.

This is unbelievable cause I don't think Nigeria has what it takes to have a digital currency and what value it's gonna be pegged on. The Nigeria naira is already falling every single day and I think the government urge to jump into digital currency to escape the humogeous falls of nature. Maybe we should be expecting Nigeria adopting Bitcoin has one of the official currency. This going to be interesting for her to join to those countries that had officially adopt Bitcoin.

What advantage will it bring if the circulation of naira note is done. I don’t see a reason to stop the circulation of Naira note when the government is against cryptocurrency trading in the country. There is a different motive to this and they’re not been truthful of their through intent to the public. Stopping this circulation of Naira note and urging people to embrace E-Naira will only cause more difficulty to the masses especially the larger population that don’t know the basics of using and transferring funds through a smartphone.

It's hard to make sense of what is happening with this article, it mentions the e-Naira but doesn't seem to describe how it'll work. To me it looks more like a payment network that is more akin to the Visa/Mastercard networks rather than anything relying on blockchain technology. It sounds like a rather rushed and disorganized plan to force it upon everyone, or is it just a certain group of people like taxi workers who will be required to use it? I feel bad for anyone who struggles with accessing technology, even if Nigeria does have a fairly low age demographic. It's good they're trying to pioneer new tech, but it seems to be poorly executed or maybe the article is just missing a lot of relevant information.

Such actions speak for themselves, it is unlikely that such things happen by accident. The goal is to impose as much financial control as possible, and on the other hand to make it harder for people to trade Bitcoin. Every government is afraid of losing control of the people, and they are doing so with the help of money that is completely under their control - and to be at least somewhat independent of that system means that you are not dependent on the government and politicians.

Most politicians consider themselves irreplaceable and have a very big opinion of themselves - you just need to listen to what they say at their political rallies. A financially independent person is a danger to them because he simply does not care about their rallies, ideas, or parliamentary/presidential elections.

---

I am not versed in who is actually pulling the strings in Nigeria (by which I mean international influence), but local politics is not always a product created in the minds of local politicians but is very often the result of external influence. Maybe someone just wants to prevent any possibility of Nigeria approaching any decentralization at all - it is much easier to do business with corrupt politicians than with honest ones.

I also read something similar recently, the second quote pointing to the same issue:

CBN urges Delta traders to embrace e-Naira

Let me quote these:


See Delta State Branch Controller of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with lies again in order for people to use their inflationary fiat. I hope Nigerians won't be foolish to the extent they will believe these leaders with misleading information.


I think CBN officials are out of their mind. They have already reduced Naira circulation already, people are complaining about this in the country, now they do not want to print Naira again, they want to make life difficult for people. This will not go as planned by CBN if truly they are working on it, or probably Godwin Okafo is just out of his mind.

Making use of E-naira in Nigeria  is not a good  idea. I don't really know why we need a digital currency In the first place, how about those that can't operate smarts phones and those that does not have assess to it.Statically,  most Nigerians can't afford a smart phones and many still leave below android version 7. I think there's a bigger plan behind this.

The Government dont know as much as they should on cryptocurrency neither do they have any idea on the macro economy. Such action when election is approaching is suspicious and I think it is to launder fund in the country. Lets consider the reach on internet in Nigeria and how savvy the population is. Nigeria is not in a state to accept electronic currency with the height of corruption, I dont welcome it at all. The next phase of crytocurrency is for technology at large to adopt crycurrency, this direction like every other country is what i want from them before the government make any move.

I highly doubt Nigeria has what it takes to go fully digital. The World Bank has it that 4 out of 10 Nigerians are living below the national poverty line. With this data, it would be next to impossible for the country to completely eradicate Naira notes and shift to the use of its digital currency. At best, this is nothing but a goal, a long-term one at that. But, for now, and for the next several decades, Nigeria has no choice but to act according to the real status of their country.

Hey man, look, It is a bull$h*t move! You and I know they wouldn't do anything about paper money.
At first, I thought they were going to withdraw some Naira denominations from circulation because inflation has rendered 5 and 10 Naira note useless in the market, but it was their branded Enaira that they are forcing on people, I have never for onetime tried to download the app on my mobile.
Less than a year before the next election, watch how they will discard all of the things that current administrations have done, it is the Nigerian government's custom to abandon everything whenever there is a change in government.

Naira notes will be out of circulation soon, says CBN official

IMO I think this is double standard for Nigerian government. What is the major difference between bitcoin and CBDC if not that governments in the world that preach hate for bitcoin only want to have control and monitor the people's transaction through their regulation.

If the Nigerian government push people into e-naira while they are stopping "bitcoin trading" and banks connected accounts, they are invariably speaking with both sides of the mouth