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But yesterday, residents of Abuja protested against the CBN’s move.

Their spokesman, Dino Melaye, said: “The CBN’s primary objective is to provide succour, economic reliance, stability and social security to Nigeria, which it had failed to do.”

Addressing the protesters at the CBN head office, Abuja, the apex bank’s Deputy Governor for Operations, Tunde Elemalu, stated that the policy was made in the best interest of ordinary Nigerians. He said that “among CBN important tasks is fighting inflation because it hurts the masses more than any other Nigerian.”

According to Atedo, “if I were the CBN governor, I will prefer to print N10,000 notes. Last year, Nigeria spent N47 billion to print these small notes. If we were printing bigger denominations, we will print a fewer number and make a phenomenal savings. [b]Second, money is a store of value. All these thieves and vagabonds running around in various states and all over the country, when they steal money, they will want to keep it outside the banking system.

“So, they need a higher denomination notes. Right now, they are using the $100 notes all over Nigeria because they are the best store of values for them. If you give them a better store of value, they will move away from those dollars and reduce the demand for the American notes and move into our own currency as opposed to the use of dollars to hide their loot, and so on. [/b]

“Right now, the country is losing in two ways. One, we are importing massive U.S. dollars to finance the activities of all these rouges because the dollars offered the higher store of values to them. And two, we squander our resources printing large volumes of worthless notes. There is no inflationary impact. That is voodoo economics. Let me tell you one thing. If you know that printing N5,000 notes will create more inflation, why don’t you reduce the value of your notes and see whether you will not experience inflation in the process. This is simple logic.”

Dangote said: “The introduction of the N5,000 note has nothing to do with inflation. I think it is even to protect the economy. The cost of printing is not anything different from the amount they are using in printing any other note. It is the same cost. The only difference is the design and the figure printed on them. Sometimes, minting the coins can even help. If I have a product, which I am selling for N5 and I want to raise the price to N6, I won’t be able to do that. It is either I swallow the bullet and take it to N10 or I don’t increase at all. A lot of companies have not been able to increase their prices even though they are loosing money. People are saying that CBN is going to spend N40 billion on the new note. Of course, last year when you look at the budget, they spent N47 billion to print currencies. It is not different at all.”

For Aig-Imoukhede, “the reactions to the planned introduction of the N5,000 note are rather unfortunate because I have tried to analyse the cause for these reactions. Legal tender and restructuring of currency are normal parts of the CBN functions. It is very rare for you to have a Central Bank that does not look at the issue of currency management and issue new notes from time to time based on the reality of the economy.”