Nigeria is a country that is unique in her own way. Every week, month and year, new things are noticed and this year is not an exception as it came with its own package.

Before now, fuel scarcity always takes its tow on Nigerians especially motorists towards the end of the year and the beginning. It actually did but it came with a different package entirely – Cash crunch.

Towards the end of the year 2022, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN announced that they were going to change the currency, not many believed that it was going to amount to something else.

Like a joke, many Nigerians rushed to the banks to deposit their old currency to collect the new ones but unfortunately, they were deceived and made to suffer. During that period, queues surfaced everywhere.

Although, there have always been queues in banks but the rush made the banks to introduce more queues and it became an habit everywhere.

To withdraw money from Automated Teller Machine, ATM, you will notice long queue. To gain access into the bank, you will have to queue. And the queues are always so long.

Wherever you go, you will notice one kind of queue or the other. Before now, queue were mostly noticed in the bank arena because of disorderliness experienced in the past and probably at airports.

It is interesting to note that majority of Nigerians are not used to queuing. They are always in a hurry to get to somewhere and get things done immediately. Even when they see people on queue, they want to come from behind and be attended to immediately.

However, because of disorderliness in most places in the past, queue was introduced by Mass Mobilization for Self Reliance, Zero Justice, and Economic Recovery, MAMZER in 1987.

The political orientation exercise was introduced by President Ibrahim Babangida administration as one of the recommendations of the Political Bureau headed by Dr. Samuel Joseph Cookey. The MAMSER was Inaugurated on July 25, 1987.

The exercise ensures that wherever you go, you must be on a queue otherwise you will face the law but that exercise has since gone into oblivion as it is no longer observed.

However, before the cash crunch, people queue to register at Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC offices across the country. After registration, they have to join another long queues to get their Permanent Voters Cards, PVC.

Car owners are also not left out of the queue madness. In fact, they are already used to it when one considers the number of times they have experienced fuel scarcity in the country.

Before the cash crunch, there was no fuel but when money became scarce, fuel was available hence motorists are forced to be on the queue because they have to make use of the Point of Sales, POS machine. And because of bank network problem, the queues became longer except for the few people that have cash to pay.

Also during the cash crunch, POS queues were noticed at Shopping Malls. Many people resorted to buying things in shopping malls, what ordinarily they would have bought at the markets. They resorted to that because they can easily pay with their ATM cards unlike the other markets where they were demanding for cash. Perishable things like vegetable, tomatoes, yam, fish, meat, etc were bought at Shopping Malls and because of that, long queues were noticed in most of the shopping malls.

It is pertinent to note that queues are still being noticed in banks especially now that money have been released to banks by the CBN.

There is no doubt that a lot of man-hour and money were lost during the periods under review when Nigerians were queuing for one thing or the other. And only a serious government will avoid such in future.