Hahaha – Nigeria, what a country as the Supreme Court punts on the new naira policy: “The Supreme Court of Nigerian has adjourned the lawsuit instituted against the federal government by states opposed to the naira redesign policy to March 3 for judgment, a week after the presidential election.” You get the idea now. As usual, every president gets his desires in Nigeria, court or no court. Muhammadu Buhari runs Nigeria, PERIOD.

Three states: Kano, Kogi and Zamfara had on February 8, dragged the federal government to court over the February 10 deadline set by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for the old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes to be phased out. The suit, which has now been joined by seven other states namely; Lagos, Ondo, Ekiti, Kano, Sokoto, Ogun and Cross River, is seeking to stop the CBN from implementing the monetary policy.

The Supreme Court had earlier issued an ex parte order restraining the CBN from enforcing its February 10 deadline. But the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami, had argued that the apex court has no jurisdiction to entertain the case because the applicants did not include the CBN in the suit.

(On March 3, the Federal Government could comply, but by then, it will be very late for the underground vaults to open, with money for election rigging)

Yet, I do not buy into the thesis of causing severe pain to citizens (with confirmed deaths) on the premise that it could eliminate election rigging. This policy confirms that the government is afraid of some people. If there are those doing criminal things, go after them, and stop destroying families and communities with a policy. This collateral damage is regrettable, as I received messages that even Ovim Oriendu Market is under stress due to lack of new Naira notes.

Some women who carry palm oil from Ezeukwu, trekking 5 hours to get to Oriendu Market, the largest market in the area, had to carry that palm oil back, because they could not find buyers to pay cash since most have no bank accounts. This is painful. Nigerians, we must learn from this and avoid repeating this mistake.

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Comment 1: “As usual, every president gets his desires in Nigeria, court or no court.” I concur prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe

In terms of how a system ought to be, this move by the judiciary doesn’t sit quite well. Smirks of timidity of the law and of those who should enforce it.

On the bright side, if it can incapacitate, to a very large extent, the flow of money to maneuver the election and the electotorate, we can obtain a white agidi from a black pot.

Comment 2: Two things stand out for me as regards this post that concerns me.
1. If the candidate that this policy is presumed to favour is not declared the winner after the elections, would we then accept it as a free and fair election devoid of vote buying?
2. If the federal govt decide to comply a week after the presidential elections, does that mean they concent to vote buying during the gubernatorial elections? Considering it is rumoured that not only do some presidential candidates have huge sums of the old notes but most governors do too.

Comment 3: It’s not a problem of having bank account. What’s the use of having a bank account when transactions take days to complete? If you can’t get notification from your bank that your transaction has been approved or disapproved, how do you conduct business with a total stranger under such circumstance?

The problem is that the bank infrastructure lags. Most people are willing to accept transfers, but when a transfers take 3 to 4 days to approve, banks become useless as a medium of exchange.

Comment 4: Many people supporting this policy of pain and death think that this evil policy will railroad their candidate to Aso Rock.They should get a shock absorber ready.
Only evil people will support evil policy.
Currency redesign can be done without having to cause pain and anguish.

Comment 5: Sad to hear about the palm oil woman. That is so unfortunate. Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe this is a good time to use one of your portfolio fintechs to work on financial inclusion.

My Response: Indeed – it is painful. We’re sending tech but as you know, you cannot change people’s culture overnight. This is beyond tech. Some people want to hold that Naira on their wrapper because that is their life. They have a right to do that, digital or not.

The Supreme Court of Nigerian has adjourned the lawsuit instituted against the federal government by states opposed to the naira redesign policy to March 3 for judgment, a week after the presidential election.

Three states: Kano, Kogi and Zamfara had on February 8, dragged the federal government to court over the February 10 deadline set by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for the old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes to be phased out. The suit, which has now been joined by seven other states namely; Lagos, Ondo, Ekiti, Kano, Sokoto, Ogun and Cross River, is seeking to stop the CBN from implementing the monetary policy.

The Supreme Court had earlier issued an ex parte order restraining the CBN from enforcing its February 10 deadline. But the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami, had argued that the apex court has no jurisdiction to entertain the case because the applicants did not include the CBN in the suit.

During the arguments on Wednesday, Kanu Agabi, counsel for the federal government, noted that the Supreme Court held that all reliefs are rooted in section 20 of the CBN Act. He further noted that the plaintiffs did not deem it fit to include the CBN as a respondent despite making reference to the apex bank 32 times in their originating summons and despite the fact that seven of the reliefs sought relate to the CBN.

Agabi, SAN, argued that the suit has nothing to do with the interest of the common man as claimed by the plaintiffs.

“The people who said they are fighting for the common man didn’t even bother to bring one common man along to court…even the Supreme Court had stopped collecting old notes before the restraining order was given.

“In all these processes, none of them has mentioned the common citizens. No one is complaining. They have not produced one single citizen who is complaining.

“Our processes have covered all the issues. All the cases should be dismissed. If court finds that we are right that under section 23 of the CBN Act, the defendants are crying in the wrong place, then cases should be dismissed.

“They made references to the CBN 32 times in their originating summons, yet the CBN has not been joined. Long before you made your order, everyone was rejecting the old notes, including this court. The President only acted to save the nation from drifting,” Agabi told the court.

The Kano State Attorney General, Sanusi Musa, SAN, who represented the 10 states, argued that the policy and its implementation did not follow due process.

“This naira redesign policy is an economic policy. It was never discussed in the Executive Council of the Federation. Our affidavit attests to that. The only body that should advise the President on economic policies is the National Economic Council, in which every state is represented,” he said. “The President did not consult the council. He consulted the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who is not a member of National Economic Council. So, this policy runs foul of the law and the process.”

“This court has a reputation for saving democracy. It must do so again in this case and overrule the President,” he added.

However, the presiding judge, Justice Inyang Okoro, decried the use of the Supreme Court for trivial issues.

“The Supreme Court has been reduced to a customary court. Tenant slaps landlord, case must end here,” he said. He added that the Supreme Court is overburdened with excruciating processes with many cases to handle. The judge therefore called for the constitution to be amended to ease the apex court of the burden.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said Google is likely going to see a significant decline in revenue derived from its search engine dominance due to the incorporation of artificial intelligence by Microsoft, its closest rival in the web search business.

Although Google has exerted more than 90% dominance in the web search industry for the past two decades, Gates believes Microsoft’s swift incorporation of OpenAI’s ChatGPT will help it wrestle off shares of the industry’s advertising revenue from the Alphabet’s subsidiary.

Gates said that on Monday in an episode of “In Good Company,” a podcast hosted by Norwegian sovereign wealth fund boss Nicolai Tangen, per Insider.

“Google has owned all of the search profits, so the search profits will be down, and their share of it may be down because Microsoft has been able to move fairly fast on that one,” he said.

Microsoft announced it’s incorporating ChatGPT into Bing, its search engine, in January – rattling Google to issue code red to employees in a bid to contain the threat that the development poses to its ad business.

Google accounts for about 93% of the global search-engine market, while Bing accounts for about 3%, according to web analytics service Statcounter.

In 2022 alone, Google posted $224 billion in advertising revenues, overwhelmingly eclipsing the $18 billion Microsoft posted the same year. The other search engine service, DuckDuckGo, also falls far short in the competition.

Microsoft, which betted $1 billion investment on OpenAI in 2019, saw ChatGPT’s humanlike contextual answers to queries as key to wrestling market shares from Google. ChatGPT has garnered over 100 million users in just about two months of launch, sweeping interest across professional fields and creating a chatbot frenzy that every section of the tech world is hurrying to catch.

Gates said on the podcast that he is surprised by how the development of AI accelerated in the last year, adding that it will be the “biggest thing in this decade.”

Microsoft is also expanding its use of AI language model to other services. Early this month, the tech giant incorporated OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 into its Teams Premium, expanding the office tool’s features with AI-powered capabilities. During that time, Gates told Forbes that AI is “every bit as important as the PC, as the internet.”

Google responded to Microsoft’s incorporation of ChatGPT into Bing with Bard, an AI-powered service designed to provide responses in a way similar to ChatGPT.

The AI race is unfolding amid concern that it poses a threat to critical thinking. While Microsoft leads the pack, Gates admitted on the podcast that he was not sure there’ll be a winner from the AI race, according to Insider.

While Gates believes the AI race is too open to call, Insider noted that he envisions AI’s integration into search engines as a “personal agent” that understands the requirements and style of users — replacing the need for separate services from different tech companies like what’s happening now with Google dominating search, Amazon owning shopping, Microsoft owning productivity tools, and Apple owning the devices market.

“A decade from now, we won’t think of those businesses as separate, because the AI will know you so well that when you’re buying gifts or planning trips, it won’t care if Amazon has the best price, if someone else has a better price — you won’t even need to think about it,” Gates said on the podcast. “So it’s a pretty dramatic potential reshuffling of how tech markets look.”

However, the cofounder of OpenAI, Elon Musk said there is need to regulate AI safety, because “frankly” It is “actually a bigger risk to society than cars or planes or medicine.”

While applauding the advancement of artificial intelligence, Musk explained that OpenAI, which he left as a board member in 2018, has been shifted from its original purpose.

“Initially it was created as an open-source nonprofit,” he said. “Now it is closed-source and for profit.”