It took just four days. Four days for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria’s (FAAN) much-hyped cashless policy to collapse under the weight of its own ambition.
By the time President Bola Tinubu ordered its suspension on Wednesday, Nigerians had already paid the price; in hours lost in gridlock, in flights missed, in the quiet indignity of being treated as an afterthought in a policy that was supposed to serve them.
Desperate oyinbo air traveler abandons his vehicle to mount an okada just to beat tollgate traffic at Murtala Muhammed Airport due to the newly introduced cashless policy at the airport. pic.twitter.com/Y64WoZPGjv
— 𝐀𝐬𝐚𝐤𝐲𝐆𝐑𝐍 (@AsakyGRN) March 3, 2026
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The policy, launched on March 1, mandated digital payments at airport access gates, car parks, lounges and other entry points. The goal was legitimate: eliminate corruption, reduce cash leakages, and modernise a revenue collection system that had been running on handshakes and notes for over 50 years.
But legitimacy of purpose does not excuse recklessness of execution. On the very first day, major airports in Lagos and Abuja descended into chaos. Motorists queued for hours. Travellers missed flights. The “Go Cashless” card, which passengers were expected to obtain and use seamlessly, became an instrument of confusion.
Minister of Aviation Festus Keyamo admitted as much, announcing that the president, “out of empathy”, had directed an immediate halt and a return to a hybrid system while a more workable solution is designed.
A Pattern Nigeria Cannot Keep Ignoring
The airport crisis did not happen in isolation. It is the latest episode in a long-running series of Nigerian policies that are bold in vision and brutal in rollout.
The most glaring precedent is the naira redesign crisis of early 2023. The CBN’s policy was hastily formulated and poorly implemented, resulting in the mop-up of over 85 per cent of 3.23 trillion naira outside the banking system without adequate replacement notes in circulation.
Between January and March 2023, the cash crunch affected economic activities severely as the economy almost came to a halt, due to the inability to access cash for daily transactions. Ordinary Nigerians — market traders, farmers, the unbanked — bore the brunt. The 38 million Nigerians who had no bank account had no choice but to hold on to old notes that were fast becoming worthless. The policy was eventually challenged at the Supreme Court by governors from multiple states, and the government was forced into a series of embarrassing retreats.
Before that, the abrupt removal of the fuel subsidy in May 2023 — necessary by many expert accounts — triggered immediate and severe hardship without adequate cushioning measures in place for the most vulnerable. Petrol prices rose exponentially and continued to peak in 2024, stoking inflation to over 30 per cent.
The thread running through all of these episodes is the same: policies conceived at the top, announced with fanfare, and then dropped onto an unprepared public.
Good Intentions Are Not Enough
There is nothing wrong with wanting a cashless airport economy. Corruption at toll gates is real. Revenue leakages are real. The case for modernisation is sound. What is not sound is the assumption that announcing a policy is the same as implementing one.
Nigeria’s previous cashless attempts have repeatedly fallen short because the digital financial infrastructure was insufficient to handle increased transaction volumes, and many citizens lacked confidence in digital financial products, a mistrust built over years of failed systems and rampant fraud. Expecting airport users to adapt overnight to an entirely new payment method, at high-traffic entry points, without large-scale public education or contingency planning, was not ambition. It was negligence dressed as reform.
Good policy requires stress-testing. It requires asking: what happens on day one if the cards fail? What happens if the network is slow? What happens to the driver who has never heard of a “Go Cashless” card? These are not difficult questions. They are basic ones and they went unasked.
What Must Change
President Tinubu’s intervention was the right call, and Keyamo’s willingness to acknowledge failure and return to the drawing board is, at the very least, encouraging. But a suspension is not a solution. Nigeria’s policy culture must change at a structural level.
Reforms must be preceded by genuine stakeholder consultation, not press releases. Pilot programmes should be run at smaller facilities before national rollouts. Implementation timelines must account for the reality that millions of Nigerians remain digitally excluded. And crucially, those who design these policies must be held accountable when they ignore these steps.
FURTHER READING
The chaos at Nigerian airports is a minor crisis in the grand scheme of things. But it is a mirror held up to a deeper dysfunction, one in which the human cost of poor planning is routinely absorbed by the very people the government claims to be helping.
Philip Ibitoye is a Special Correspondent with EKO HOT BLOG. Click here to find daily analysis and critical insight on trending issues in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria.
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