Throwing cash in the air and trampling them on the ground

It is such a pathetic phenomenon seeing wads of currency notes being flung up in the air only for the cash to be trampled on the ground. The newfangled culture of young men and women spewing cash in the air appears to have come to stay. The new wannabes are no respecters of currency, any currency for that matter. In fact, the harder the currency – dollars or pounds sterling or euro etc. – the higher they throw it into the air at parties and similar occasions they patronize.

Where and how this bizarre act started is exactly unknown. Somehow it has become the in-thing and the surefire way young people celebrate their peers to indicate that they have arrived in wealth.

Time was when the vogue manifested in the southern parts of the country where juju musicians in the Southwest and highlife artistes in the Southeast were measuredly pasted with money. The currency notes were modestly pasted on their foreheads or chests in appreciation of their melodious renditions at events. The celebrants equally attracted the same level of refined appreciation from their guests. With time, the cash-in-the-air craze gradually gravitated to the North where it has assumed a frightening dimension. It’s no longer an issue of spewing singular cash notes into the air. Guests now toss entire bundles and packs of the currency at the celebrant as if to save him or her the trouble of raking the notes together at the dance floor.

The alarming part of it all is that the law enforcement agents stand by or actually escort these moneybags to the venues where they throw money into the air and dance on the notes as they drop to the ground.

These actions raise the moral and legal issues as to how our young men and women make their money nowadays vis-a-vis how they dispense them with such reckless abandon that challenges the law forbidding such acts.

Is this an authoritarian case of “nobody should tell me how to spend my money?” If such flagrant liberties are permitted, it then means the money men and women in our midst can easily afford to trample on people’s rights just as they do the currency notes. The rights to freedom and other important privileges that are enshrined in the constitution can easily be compromised when members of the idle rich class are literally allowed to get away with this manner of crass indiscretion.

Section 21 of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Act of 2007 expressly states that anybody misusing the naira in this way shall be liable to N50,000 fine or six months imprisonment or both.

It is a great pity that this law is only observed in the breach, maybe because of the paltry fine which is tantamount to a slap on the wrist. There is hardly any other country in the world that abuses currencies the way Nigerians do. It is as though Nigerians behave well when they travel to other countries only to return home and start acting up with ill-assorted shenanigans.

It is unfathomable that people who work hard for their money will spend it in such an abusive manner. Could it then be a case of “easy come, easy go?” In that case, can easily made money be legit? That’s for the experts to interrogate.

But even if it’s legitimate wealth, the grotesque manner in which it is spent raises a lot of questions. It obviously creates a bad example amongst the upcoming generation who would now do anything to “make it” like their role models.

People catapulting cash into the air at parties should be something of interest to our tax collectors. The value of the cash thrown into the air ought to be captured in the tax net of the nation just the same way that Uncle Sam in the United States does not spare any tax dodger.

There is no gainsaying the fact that our rich youths in Anambra State have been infected by this fad. Our wealthy forebears are known to have made their money by dint of hard work. It was unheard of that after dissipating so much effort to make money, they would throw it into the air like volleyball just to show that they have arrived. The way they demonstrated that they had arrived was to invest in ventures that produced goods, services and employment.

The new generations that have been so blessed should emulate this culture. But where the money is in excess supply, they should heed Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo’s call to engage in Public Private Community Partnership. That way, the money will be properly deployed and utilized, and their names will be etched in gold for posterity sake.

Nwosu, is commissioner for information, Anambra State