IMTFI Fellow Oludayo Tade, Department of Sociology, University of Ibadan, shares his research published in Protest
In the first week of February 2023, videos of two people who stripped naked in some banking halls located in Southern Nigeria went viral. The undressing of these bank depositors was sequel to their inability to withdraw cash or access their money in the bank due to the naira redesign policy of the Nigerian government which, among other things, instructed account holders to deposit old naira currencies in banks in order to withdraw the newly redesigned bank notes of ₦200, ₦500 and ₦1000 denominations.
However, depositors could not get the new naira notes to withdraw. The deadline to return old naira notes to the banks lapsed on January 31, 2023 and depositors became stranded, unable to access their monies. The Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) were not loaded with the new redesigned currencies to enable people to carry out socio-economic activities and necessary transactions. The story was not different inside the banking halls. Bank gates were locked against customers and many scaled bank fences to get inside. At times, people got to the bank as early as 6am to write down their names in order to access cash. When they got cash, they were paid ₦5,000 (approximately $4USD) which can barely last a day. This led to what was described as cash crunch, cash capture, or cash crisis, affecting the informal economy, education, health and religious institutions, which largely depend on cash.
Although the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) informed the public of a withdrawal limit of ₦20,000 (approximately $15USD) per day, this was also not available and those who visited banks returned empty handed and lives and the economy began to suffer strains. The scarcity of cash for transactions, mobility, and businesses started to bite harder. Point of Sale (POS) agents began to charge more than 20 percent for cash withdrawals.
By the second week of February 2023, the inability of customers to access their monies in banks started to affect performance of economic responsibilities, school attendance, the mobility and purchase of goods, and implementation of projects. Unlike the naked protests which occurred within banking halls, street protests turned destructive when life became difficult for people. Banks shut their doors and mostly didn’t load ATMs. Days after the naked protests, other depositors who tried to access their monies by being law abiding became violent, burning bank properties and attacking bank staff.
My research interrogated the performance of nude deviant protest by two Nigerians (a female and male) in two banking halls as a form of resistance to government policy which redesigned the naira and limited access to physical cash in a largely cash-based economy. In particular I ask: Why and how did nude deviant protesters resist cash scarcity within the Nigerian banking halls? How do naked bodies become sites of power contestations, welfare agitation, and narrative of care? In what ways do naked protesters provide insights into the unintended consequences of the Naira redesign policy and primacy of cash? What follows is a description of the nude protests by the two depositors.
“Close my bank account and return my money”
The video of the first depositor showed a fairly complexioned female with braided hair. She was stripped half-naked and shown only in bra and tights. Her removed top laid on the banking hall floor where she protested and exposed herself. Her mannerism exuded audacity to challenge and demand justice over what she considered seizure of her money and its disruptive effect on her wellbeing. As she swung from right to the left, she alluded to the impact that her inability to get access to her money is having on her family. In this instance, her children were unable to attend school because public transportation in Nigeria is largely conducted with cash. She demanded closure of her account.
“Close my bank account. Close my bank account and return my money. I am not banking with you again. My children could not go to school yesterday. They also did not go today.”
-female nude protester
Although the body is projected in the performance to attract and resist, the utterances speak to fundamental issues revolving around motherhood expectations of the society which the implemented policy has negatively affected. In her short communication, the female protester showed the importance of physical cash in mobility, particularly in public transportation which her children would have to board to and from school. Since public transportation is cash-based, her children were forced to stay at home without going to school. Not going to school had implications for their education, learning, and self-worth among their peers whose parents were able to raise cash for them to go to school.
“Shoot me and let me die”: The Protest of a Naked Married Man
The second video showed a male depositor around his early 40s. He fully stripped himself within the banking hall, left his clothes inside one of the offices in the bank and walked up and down within the banking space, crying and giving reasons for his actions. He summed up his frustrations with the bank after bank officials refused to listen to the difficulties he and his family had been facing due to his inability to get cash. The expressions of the naked male protester show a narrative of death and finality. This could be better understood when one understands the primacy of cash and how vulnerable one can become without having the acceptable means of exchange. Having cash at hand was important to pay for the health care services of his ill wife, because payments in public hospitals are mostly by cash with limited acceptance of alternative payment options. This makes life difficult for the ‘health caregivers’ like this man who explained his inability to cater to the needs of his family ̶ provision of food and health care. In this way, money in an account that cannot be used does not have the value associated with it. He requested to withdraw the entire ₦520, 000 (approximately $400USD) in his account:
“Give me my money let me go. You frustrated me. My wife is in the hospital…about to die. There is nothing again. How old are my children? Seven years, four years…give me my money. I don taya [I am tired]. Let them shoot me so that I will die…Oga shoot me let me die [looking at the police officer]. They have called you [police], shoot me and let me die, make I forget my children, make I forget my wife.” -male nude protester
His survival is dependent on having access to cash to make life worth living for his household, without which, there is nothing else to live for.
Conclusion
Bodies do not act alone; they constitute sites of politics. By moving up and down (i.e., mobility), the bodies of the two naked protesters are presented as suffering inhuman treatment of an unjust denial of access to their monies which would have been used to improve the welfare of their families. The nude bodies through their performances within the banking halls created a new space for contestation, negotiation, attention, and sympathy.
Acting defiantly against the normative expectations within the banking hall provided a means to repossess and recreate a new space for negotiation. This simple act allows them to get the desired attention by not only projecting the banks in bad light as ill-treating their customers where they can suffer reputational risks. The nude protesters also project the sufferings of many people who otherwise needed their monies but could not access same due to the cash scarcity crisis. This scarcity, in part, occasioned by the frustrating digital infrastructure which seemed overwhelmed by the volume of transactions which migrated online when physical cash became scarce. Apart from getting the attention of bank authorities to intervene and save the nude protesters, the viral nature of the recorded video presents the severe hardships that the policy caused many people, particularly those who deal more in the informal economy
Full journal article is available online: Tade, O. (2024). “Shoot Me and Let Me Die”: Cash Scarcity and the Performance of Deviant Nude Protest in Nigeria. Protest, 4(1), 30-48.