The Nigerian eNaira and the Currency Redesign Policy: A Review on Their Effectiveness

The advancement in modern technology, internet usage and the need to swiftly carry out transactions between individuals who are physically apart has given rise to the invention of various kinds of electronic payment systems. In this paper, the researchers applied both the quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis on primary and secondary sources of data gathered respectively to assess the effectiveness of the Nigerian digital currency, the eNaira and the currency redesign policy. Also, it reviews a couple of literature relevant to the naira redesign policy implementation and the eNaira which reveals that naira redesign may not achieve much in mitigating currency counterfeiting, banditry and laundering if this does not take into consideration extending the security features of the naira notes and redenominating the naira notes to include N2000, N5000, N10,000 and N20,000 notes and converting N50, N20, N10, and N5 notes to coins as this is expected to reduce the annual printing and minting costs of the naira. Furthermore, from the survey conducted by the study, the researchers found that most respondents have less than N5000 worth of the new naira notes in their possession and most had issues onboarding the USSD platform resulting from poor network connectivity mostly on the Globacom and 9Mobile networks. The study reveals that there is generally poor circulation of the new naira notes and low adoption of the eNaira. This paper recommends that the new naira notes be made readily accessible by citizens, better security features be added to the naira notes, redenomination of the naira notes to include N2000, and N5000 notes and the coinage of N50, N20, N10, and N5 notes be considered, more awareness of the eNaira be made especially on popular social media platforms and USSD connectivity on all major Nigerian mobile networks be stabilised.