As anticipated by the Nigerian Observer in a report on Monday, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have called off a planned nationwide strike scheduled to come into effect Wednesday morning, March 29.
Joe Ajaero, the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said on Tuesday, that after briefings from the NLC’s state councils in the 36 states and Abuja, the body had suspended the planned stay-at-home directive issued to workers last week.
Ajaero however affirmed that the NLC would resume the planned protest if naira notes became unavailable to Nigerians by the end of two weeks.
The kernel for the contemplation of the planned strike was a lingering cash crunch which had caused significant discomfort to households and the national economy.
Other matters raised were the intermittent fuel scarcity and electricity tariff increase.
Ajaero had at a meeting with Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor and Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour on Monday, expressed satisfaction with CBN’s infusion of cash into the economy.
He said Labour no longer envisaged a problem since the CBN had started sending cash to the banks and Nigerians were accessing their money.
As at Monday, Nigerians started getting significant relief from the cash crunch which followed the invalidation of the old N1,000 and N500 denomination of currency notes in the wake of a currency redesign exercise January 31.
This followed substantial flows of the said old N1,000 and N500 notes to the commercial banks from the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and express instructions that the commercial banks should open to customers last Saturday and Sunday and rapidly dispense the notes over the counter and through Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).
The said currency notes previously invalidated by the CBN had been revalidated by the Supreme Court in a ruling but an awkward silence and poorly perceived messages had the publics apparently confused and in doubt.
This led to hesitance and outright rejection of the bills, until the CBN and the Federal Government made more explicit statements acceeding to the authority of the Supreme Court ruling.
Customers thronged commercial banks and ATMs across the country through the weekend and into Monday and Tuesday and received their cash in incremental volumes, larger than the previous paltry sums of between N2,000 and N5,000 of the weeks and days past.
By Tuesday, banks were dispensing between N5,000 and N100,000 mostly in old notes, the latter sum being dispensed especially across the counter.
Also customer turn-around time and cash collection success rate at the banks had improved significantly, despite the long queues.
This was the case in Benin, the Edo Stat capital, as elsewhere around the country.
One significant sign of better cashflow to customers was that Point of Sale (PoS) operators who previously charged up to 30 percent commissions on cash drawn by desperate Nigerians, lowerered their commissions to ten percent and in many cases were hard put to find customers.
