Last week, I experienced the full absurdity of Nigeria’s so-called cashless economy. As a medical student going through departmental clearance, I found myself in a bizarre financial loop: withdrawing money digitally from POS agents, paying their fees, walking physical cash to my department, only for that same cash to presumably end up back in another bank account.
Every department demanded cash. Not bank transfers. Not card payments. The irony? We’re in 2026, in an institution training future doctors, and we’re operating like it’s 1996.
When Policy Meets Potholes
The Nigerian government loves talking about going cashless. The Central Bank has implemented withdrawal limits, celebrated rising digital transaction numbers, and positioned Nigeria as a fintech leader in Africa. The speeches are impressive, but the reality is frustrating.
The infrastructure is actively unreliable. “This network sef” has become our national mantra. Try making a transfer during peak hours, and you’re gambling. Will it go through instantly? Will it hang for three hours while your money exists in digital limbo? Will it fail completely, leaving you to chase reversals that may take days?
My departments aren’t demanding cash because they’re stuck in the past. They’re demanding it because they’ve learned the hard way that digital payments in Nigeria are a gamble they can’t afford. When you’re collecting fees from hundreds of students, you can’t spend half your day reconciling failed transactions or proving that money actually left someone’s account.
The POS Paradox
Here’s the beautiful contradiction: POS agents are everywhere now, and they’re thriving. They’ve become essential middlemen in an economy supposedly designed to eliminate middlemen. Outside every bank, in every market, on street corners across Nigeria, someone is ready to help you access your own money, for a fee, of course.
I paid these agents several times during my clearance. Each withdrawal came with its tax; ₦100 here, ₦200 there. Not because the service is particularly valuable, but because the formal banking infrastructure has made accessing cash so difficult that informal agents have built an entire business around it.
This is our cashless economy: paying someone to convert our digital money to cash, so we can hand it to institutions that will convert it back to digital money.
The Missing Foundation
Going cashless requires more than policy pronouncements. It requires reliable internet connectivity, which we don’t have. It requires constant electricity to power POS terminals, which we don’t have. It requires trust in the system’s reliability, which we definitely don’t have.
It requires a banking infrastructure that doesn’t collapse under the weight of routine transactions. It requires institutions equipped and willing to accept digital payments. It requires a backup plan for when (not if) the network fails.
We have none of these consistently.
The Way Forward (If Anyone’s Listening)
Nigeria isn’t ready for a cashless economy because we’ve tried to build the roof before laying the foundation. We need stable power. We need reliable internet. We need banking apps that work during peak hours. We need accountability when transactions fail.
Until then, I’ll keep paying POS agents to withdraw my own money, walking cash across campus like a human ATM, and wondering why we’re pretending we’ve arrived at a destination we haven’t even started driving toward.
