By Suleyman A Ndanusa PhD OON
There was a time when leaving home without cash felt almost irresponsible.
Today, I have discovered something rather embarrassing.
I can leave home with a healthy bank balance and still be completely broke.
It happened again last Friday.
As I stepped out of the mosque after Jumu’ah prayers, a little boy approached me with the confidence that only experience can produce. Without saying a word, he stretched out his hand. Instinctively, I reached into my pocket
My pocket, unfortunately, had already embraced Nigeria’s financial sector reforms.
It contained no cash.
Only a mobile phone with enough money to buy lunch for everyone standing nearby.
“I’m sorry,” I said apologetically, “I don’t have any cash.”
I took a few steps before a thought stopped me in my tracks.
Was this little boy hearing exactly the same sentence from dozens of other worshippers?
The more I reflected on it, the more I realised that this was no longer my personal excuse. It had quietly become our collective reality.
The same scene repeats itself outside churches on Sundays, at naming ceremonies, weddings, burial grounds and even traffic intersections. Somewhere between bank transfers, mobile wallets, POS terminals and QR codes, many of us have unconsciously stopped carrying cash.
Then another thought crossed my mind, and I could not help smiling.
Perhaps somewhere in Nigeria there ought to be an emergency meeting of the Association of Professional Beggars.
Agenda Item One:
“This fintech thing is becoming a serious problem.”
The humour, of course, conceals a serious economic question.
For decades, governments have struggled with the social challenge of street begging. Committees have been established. Laws have been enacted. Rehabilitation programmes have come and gone. Religious leaders have preached compassion alongside reform. Traditional rulers have intervened. Scholars have examined the phenomenon from almost every conceivable angle.
Yet street begging has displayed an extraordinary ability to survive.
Perhaps because we have spent so much time confronting the visible problem without paying sufficient attention to the invisible economics sustaining it.
Street begging, after all, has an economic model.
Like every economic activity, it survives because certain incentives make it sustainable.
For generations, its business model was remarkably simple.
People carried cash.
The transaction required no infrastructure, no banking relationship, no internet connection and certainly no fintech. A passer by reached into a pocket, produced a few naira notes, offered them in charity, and everyone continued on their separate journeys.
Cash was not merely the medium of exchange.
It was the business model
Then, almost without anyone noticing, technology quietly entered the conversation.
Interestingly, fintech never attended the policy meetings.
It was never invited to stakeholder consultations.
No software engineer woke up one morning determined to reform street begging.
Technology simply set out to make payments easier.
Yet, in solving one problem, it may have quietly begun reshaping another.
Every day, thousands of Nigerians now utter the same sentence.
“I’m sorry… I don’t have cash.”
No law has prohibited generosity.
No regulation has criminalised almsgiving.
No official stands outside places of worship preventing charitable giving.
The incentive structure has simply changed.
Human beings, of course, adapt remarkably well. There are now reports of organised beggars displaying bank account details, requesting transfers and even embracing QR codes. Innovation, it seems, observes no occupational boundaries.
Yet even those adaptations tell their own story.
Once giving requires a transfer, a banking application or a mobile phone, something fundamental changes. What was once an impulsive act becomes a conscious financial decision.
Technology introduces just enough friction into a transaction that previously depended almost entirely on spontaneity.
More than eighty years ago, the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter observed that capitalism possesses a curious habit. It continually creates new ways of doing things while quietly retiring old ones.
He called the process creative destruction.
Schumpeter probably imagined factories, industries and businesses.
I very much doubt he imagined that one day his famous theory would interrupt the centuries old relationship between the Nigerian pocket and the begging bowl.
Yet that may be precisely what is happening.
Fintech has not declared war on street begging.
It has simply made carrying cash progressively less necessary.
That is creative destruction in one of its most unexpected forms.
The fascinating lesson, however, extends far beyond street begging.
Technology often succeeds where public policy struggles because it changes incentives instead of merely issuing instructions.
Governments tend to regulate behaviour.
Technology quietly redesigns it.
Email quietly retired the fax machine
Mobile phones quietly retired the public telephone booth.
Streaming platforms quietly retired the neighbourhood CD shop.
Electronic banking quietly retired long queues inside banking halls.
Now fintech may be quietly negotiating with the begging bowl.
Perhaps this explains why the most successful reforms are often the least celebrated.
They do not arrive with colourful ceremonies, official launches or lengthy policy speeches.
They simply alter everyday behaviour until one morning society wakes up and realises that an old habit has quietly become history.
We rarely notice these transitions while they are taking place because they occur one transaction at a time, one mobile transfer at a time, one empty wallet at a time.
Looking back, however, they often seem inevitable.
Perhaps this is the lesson policymakers should never forget.
Every social problem has two lives.
One is visible.
The other is economic.
Governments naturally focus on the visible manifestation. But the invisible incentive structure often determines whether the problem survives.
Change the incentives and behaviour frequently begins to change without coercion.
This observation should not be misunderstood.
If fewer people carry cash, poverty has not disappeared.
Children still deserve education.
Families still need livelihoods
Communities and religious institutions continue to bear profound responsibilities towards society’s most vulnerable.
Indeed, this technological moment should not be celebrated as the disappearance of a social problem but embraced as an opportunity to solve it differently.
If fintech is quietly weakening the economics of street begging, then perhaps governments, communities and religious institutions should seize this moment to invest even more deliberately in education, skills, social protection and dignified pathways out of poverty.
History teaches us that societies do not always change because governments pass better laws.
Sometimes they change because innovation quietly rewrites the rules by which ordinary people live.
Years from now, historians may correctly record that governments, religious leaders, civil society organisations and communities all contributed to reducing street begging in Nigeria.
They would be right.
But perhaps they should also reserve one small footnote for an unlikely reformer.
Not a minister.
Not a governor.
Not even an economist.
Just an ordinary mobile phone that quietly persuaded millions of Nigerians to stop carrying cash.
Perhaps that is innovation’s greatest trick.
While governments debate yesterday’s problems, technology quietly changes tomorrow’s behaviour.
And by the time we notice, society has already moved on.
Suleyman A. Ndanusa, PhD, OON, is an economist, lawyer, strategic studies scholar, and public policy thinker and practitioner with extensive experience in financial markets, regulation, governance, national Security and development.
