After Silifatu Adefila concluded her weekend chores at 11 a.m. on February 26, she dashed to Oja Oba, a market newly created by the Olusin of Ijara-Isin, the traditional ruler of her small town in the southern part of Kwara State, North-central Nigeria.
Mrs Adefila’s mission was not to buy or sell at the market but to get vouchers usually shared by the king at the market every Saturday.
“Kabiyesi will soon be at the market to distribute money,” Ms Adefila said in Igbomina, a Yoruba dialect spoken in parts of Kwara South Senatorial District and Osun State, as she hastily tied her head wrapper, gesturing to the reporter to conclude the questions.
If she gets one, the voucher can buy enough foodstuff for her family for a week.
“You cannot keep or convert the money but use it to buy food and other items at Oja-Oba. Most shops in the village also accept it,” she added as she shut the door to her house.
The traditional ruler, Ademola Ajibola, introduced the TLK voucher in August 2021 as a means of exchange within Ijara-Isin.
Some economic experts commended the initiative as a palliative for the economic hardship in Nigeria but others are sceptical about the scheme.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), over 91 million persons live in absolute poverty in Nigeria, fueled by a 20 per cent inflation in food prices.
A new king trying to revive a rural economy
Located in Isin Local Government Area in Kwara South Senatorial district, Ijara-Isin has a hilly terrain. And like many rural communities in Nigeria, its economy is based on the incomes of civil servants, healthcare workers and subsistent crop farmers.
In the past decade, farmers in the community have shifted attention to cashew nuts, which seasonal harvest provides them with a temporary windfall. A four-litre bucket of cashew sells for between N3,500 and N4,000.
However, turning farmlands into cashew plantations have pushed up the prices of staple crops in the community, adding to the pains of the biting national food inflation.
Point of Sale (POS) businesses provide access to financial services in Ijara Isin at a cost of about N30 per withdrawal of N1,000. However, POS banking services are limited to the withdrawal, saving and sending of money.
For other commercial banking services, residents have to travel to Omu-Aran, their old provincial headquarters; or Ilorin, the state capital. This is because, in the past few years, incessant robbery attacks have forced commercial banks in Oro, Omu-Aran, Offa and other towns along the Kabba-Ajase-Ipo road to shut down.
Residents have thus been living in harsh conditions in the town but the emergence of a ‘billionaire’ king has been of tremendous help to the people of Ijara.
Mr Ajibola has been injecting money into the local economy, rehabilitating schools, roads and low-cost houses started by the federal government under the late President Shehu Shagari in the early 1980s but which were never completed.
However, the story of the community is not all about paradise. The traditional stool in the town is the subject of litigation in court, some of the cases lingering for over 30 years. Mr Ajibola is the first from his own section of the town (Ile Olusin). Hence, asking the residents about the currency is met with initial suspicion, until the identity of the reporter is sorted out.
Mr Ajibola’s section of the town was banned from the throne in 1911. After years of litigations, in 2014, the late Oba Omoniyi Banigbe, Mr Ajibola’s immediate predecessor, and the council of chiefs had an out of court settlement. However, a section of the town, Odo-Ijara, was not satisfied with the settlement and went to court again to challenge the new arrangement.
How the currency works
Mr Ajibola’s initiative was inspired by what he saw in the United States in 2021, where vouchers were being used as a means of exchange in some factories, a close aide told PREMIUM TIMES.
He created the voucher system upon his return to Nigeria in August 2021. Earlier, the monarch had converted a part of the moribund Nigerian Postal Service office in the community into a microfinance bank called Ijara-Isin Development Fund Centre (IDFC). The micro-finance bank now issues the vouchers.
Because IDFC does not have the licence to operate as a micro-finance bank, it uses the licence of a micro-finance bank owned by the king, Mount Olive Microfinance Bank, Ilorin.
The monarch declined to speak to PREMIUM TIMES officially. However, this reporter visited the IDFC and met the assistant manager, Yomi Odumade, who revealed the challenge of explaining to the people that the voucher is not money.
Mr Odumade said after Mr Ajibola became king in 2021, he was handing out money to his subjects in the hope that when they spend it in the community, it will have a multiplier effect that will expand the community’s economy.
However, the king discovered that instead of spending it on the local economy as he had hoped, many preferred to either save it in their bank accounts or even spend it on goods sold outside the community. To address that, he introduced the voucher.
“When the voucher was introduced, as a worker here, they pay you 50 per cent in naira and 50 per cent in the voucher. That means, you will have to spend 50 per cent of that money here,” Mr Odumade said.
Opposition to ‘alien currency’
Despite the overwhelming support that the currency enjoys, its use encountered confrontation from internal and external forces.
