Charles Awuzie speaks on the New Naira – My deep thoughts:
Fellow Nigerians…
Permit me to think differently on the new Naira…
It is a great improvement to our National Currency Printing System.
In the past 7 years, the cost of printing Naira increased by 143%. This affected the printing of lower denominations like N50 since the cost of printing N50 was the same as printing N1000.
Just to print 2.5 Billion Naira Notes in 2020, we spent over 58 Billion Naira. The value placed on those notes are determined by market forces which means as the value of Naira continued to fall, we would end up spending more money to print ‘worthless’ notes. This would have been bad for our Currency.
The intervention of the CBN to remove some colours from Soludo’s $Tupid multi colour N1000 was long overdue. The reduction of the colours in the notes is a confirmation of the unintelligence of Charles Soludo.
Do not forget that it was Peter Obi who pointed out the fact that we were spending more money in printing multi colour worthless notes. The CBN picked up his advice and acted on it. Unfortunately, nobody is giving Peter Obi the credit for this .
Let me say this – the CBN deceived Nigerians by saying they were Re-Designing Naira Notes. They probably used the word ‘Re-Design’ to justify the exaggerated amount they assigned to themselves for the ‘re-design’ of the notes in question. This is simply a colour reduction process which removed magenta from N1000, black colour from N500 bill and leaving N200 with only magenta. This is colour reduction, NOT Re-Designing.
I therefore urge Nigerians to demand accountability from those who managed the so called redesigning project – our money has gone down some snake throats.
You know Charles Awuzie by now so you will understand me when I ask you to focus on intellectual analysis of the new Naira instead of catching the Snapchat cruise.
Do not just criticize the change in colour – no. See the bigger picture they don’t want you to see. The fact that they must have taken advantage of a very good initiative to siphon our treasury. On the brighter side, their days are numbered and Real Change is coming.
In conclusion, this is a commendable improvement on the cost of printing Naira. Shame to Soludo who caused us the massive 143% increase in cost of printing. At least, we have come out of one more mess poopooed by the leaking backside of the EMPTY governor.
Concerned Nigerian: “Charles, why do we have an Arabic inscription on the Naira? Is Nigeria an Islamic nation?”
Charles Awuzie:
Please calm down. The problem we have in Nigeria is lack of proper citizenship education.
The Arabic script on the Naira is actually Ajami.
Ajami is a pre-colonial era practice of writing other languages using a modified Arabic script.
Ajami was sewn into the fabrics of the socio-cultural life of our ancestors.
Swahili and Hausa are the major languages written in Ajami.
Utendi wa Tambuka is a Swahili Poem written in Ajami around 1728AD. Utendi wa Tambuka is Swahili but the writing style is Ajami. (See Sample C in the pictures attached).
If you check the old Naira, (sample A in attached pictures) Naira Goma which means Ten Naira was written in Hausa with Ajami script. Yes, that’s Hausa language but scripted with Ajami to reflect the historical relevance of Ajami in Africa. This has nothing to do with religion but history and culture.
But in 2007, President Olusegun Obasanjo cited that most Nigerians can now understand English language and there was no longer need to reflect Ajami on the Naira so the Ajami scripted Naira Goma was replaced with the modern Hausa language and written as seen in Sample B.
Now understand that Igbo and Yoruba are scripted in Latin Letters. Unfortunately, this is the reality of Africa as we lost our original African writing styles due to external influences. In fact, truth be told, the closest African writing practice we can have on the Naira is Ajami.
After Obasanjo’s administration, Ajami was not used on lower Naira denominations until 2014 when President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration issued a new N100 note to commemorate the 1914 amalgamation and the words “Naira Dari” — Hausa for “one hundred naira” — appeared in Ajami. Again, this was misunderstood but I blame the almost useless National Orientation Agency for not doing enough to educate Nigerians about the significance of Ajami.
Like I said in the opening sentence of this article, Nigeria’s major problem is lack of proper citizenship education and history. We are lost but we know not.
We have embraced Latin scripting and developed phobia for Ajami which is the only surviving Africanized writing practice from pre-colonial era.
I leave you to judge whether we still need Ajami on our Naira or not… But at least Know that Ajami on the Naira has no connection with Islam just as Latin Letters on the Naira has no link to Christianity – it’s simply a writing style.
Thank you Buhari. Thank you Peter Obi. We will thank Emefiele after he shows us how much he spent on the ‘redesigning’ project.
My name is Charles Awuzie and I am Obidiently patriotic to my country.
