Right.

Dealing with cash incurs such a disconnect in accountability. I can understand why the government is introducing this change. There will be some changes required for accommodating offices where they used to withdraw N500 and smaller denomination notes that are given out as change when the clients paying don't have exact change. But where there's demand, there will be plenty of agents roaming who will convert the offices N,1000 notes for smaller denominations, but there will be a fee for that.

The reason this is big news though is that the government and the Central Bank have been pushing their CBDC through stick (friction and penalties) and carrot (subsidization and ease-of-use). Of course, with a CBDC, the government has continuous real-time access to all the transaction data and can control the funds of individuals (e.g, social credit system) or en masse (demurrage, expiration date on funds received).

Actually, that level of tracking and control is exactly what you would want for the government offices. But those offices then transact with private businesses and individuals, so if they want to do business with the government, they need to be set up to be paid using the CBDC. Maybe employees too would receive their payroll income in the form of CBDC. And that's where the risk of CBDC spreading occurs.

So if the next development is these government offices being pressured to use CBDCs, it might only be a matter of time before individuals and companies are pressured into following suit -- something that is not in their best interest, and not something they are not currently doing (and would not do, if not for that being a requirement to continue doing business with the state.