I believe there's another way to live besides this. But I think the problem is, as humans, we have created this mental construct for ourselves about money that's really putting us in this much pain and suffering.

You know, money has always been the problem. But a lot of people don't know what money is. I'm sure that's why we are suffering so much today. Money isn't something tangible like, let's say, an apple or a television that has real value. It's just paper, ink, and numbers on it. Money is just an exchange for value. It's not valuable itself, but you can exchange it for something valuable, like a mango.

This is how money is supposed to work: If you have a mango tree and, let's say, your tree produces 100 mangos, you can't eat all 100 mangos at once. But if you keep these mangos, in a week's time, they will spoil. The only way I can eat all my 100 mangos is for me to give them out to someone who needs mangos at that point in time, and in return, he gives me something (money) in exchange for the mango (value). So let's say I exchange 90 mangos for 90 Naira. It's not my business if those mangos are going to spoil, as long as I have already exchanged them for money (something that is not really valuable but people believe it has value). Whenever I need mangos, I can go and exchange money for mangos with anybody who has 90 mangos that want to sell, so their own won't spoil. That's how money is supposed to work.

Because I know I can exchange 90 Naira for 90 mangos, I now believe there is no point in even farming mangos again. Instead, I should just go and get 90 Naira, and then I will exchange it for mangos. You see, nobody wants to do the basic things like grow their food anymore because we can just get 90 Naira, and then we can eat. But that's not how it's supposed to work. You are supposed to grow your food. You grow your beans, I grow my rice, and the other person grows yams. But since we don't want to use the trade by barter system, I have rice, but I also need beans so I can cook rice and beans. I don't want to give you my rice in exchange for beans, so I give you money instead. You accept my money because if you need beans next week, you can go to another person who produces beans, give him the money, and he will give you the beans. And he too can go and exchange that money for beans later.

Remember that money (intangible) becomes tangible when exchanged with something tangible. That's why I can come to your store, give you an ordinary piece of paper with ink showing 100 Naira on it, and in exchange, you give me 10 cups of garri. The reason why you accepted the paper is because you know you can take that paper to someone else whenever you need 10 cups of garri, and they will give it to you.

Now, imagine, just as you produce your beans, I produce my rice, and the other person produces yam, there is someone else whose only product is money. He doesn't produce yams, beans, or anything; he only produces money.

So this person who produces money comes to me and says, "Look, why are you stressing yourself producing rice? You can just take this money, and use it to go and buy what you want to buy, but you're going to pay me back this money with interest." I would feel like this is a good deal, right? So I stop being productive because I can just go and use money. But there is no problem if I stop productivity because at least there are other 99 people producing, so it's no problem.

The problem begins when the other 99 people also say they don't want to produce anymore. They just want to take money from that guy creating money to buy whatever they want. Over time, their total level of productivity (production of goods and services) reduces, while the amount of money in circulation increases. There is now plenty of money in the economy to buy as much beans as I want, but there is no beans to buy because nobody is producing beans. So the price of the available beans will have to go up due to scarcity and demand ratio. We call this inflation.

To be honest, it takes months or even years to be productive. If I plant beans today, I have to wait months to get my beans. But, that person can simply print money today, tomorrow, and next. They can buy paper and ink on credit, print money, pay back the paper and ink seller, and then lend out the remaining money. Imagine if you were the only person allowed to do this in the entire country.

No one wants to work anymore because they can just use money for what they want. It always becomes about money. The money producer sees that nobody wants to work anymore; they just want the product they are producing, which is money. They can create as much money as they want without it costing them anything. They can produce money whenever they like, and we will always need their money. Now everything has gone digital, and the numbers in the money producer's apps are what we use as money. They don't even have to pay the paper and ink sellers anymore; they can just produce money out of nothing.

We should stop relying on money. It's just a product, a commodity, and that's how we should view it. It doesn't have any real tangible value because it's just paper or numbers in a computer system.

What we need to do is create value, and if we can't consume all of our values, then we can look for an exchange for that value, which is money. We can store the value for whenever we need it again. But the reverse is the case today because money is easier to obtain than the value itself. Obtaining the exchange for value is easy, but obtaining the value itself is not. So, people no longer want to produce rice because they can simply go and get money to exchange for rice. It's much easier.

I strongly believe that money should be based on something that is truly valuable, something that can be produced by humans, and something more valuable than paper and digits on a computer. How about if goods and services were priced in rice and beans? I know it sounds funny, but it could work, trust me.

We can rotate it yearly for the 4-5 most consumed crops in Nigeria. This year, we could use rice, next year we might try groundnuts, then beans. We would rotate it yearly and add new crops to the list, but the crop chosen has to be something that can be measured.

Instead of saying "100 books = 100 naira," we could say "100 books = 100 cups of rice." Now, all of a sudden, nobody wants naira anymore, they all want rice, automatically forcing people to take responsibility for creating their own money. This could even be a perfect way to take away the power to create and control money and give that power to each and every one of us.

My concern is, what if the book seller no longer wants to sell books but just wants to plant rice? But look at the bright side, we are exchanging value (books) for value (rice) and not value (books) for no value (pieces of paper, numbers in a computer). So, if the book seller no longer wants to produce books but wants to produce rice (something really valuable), isn't that a win-win situation?. And then maybe the next year we switch to beans, and the year after, we try something else.

There is a big problem, though. If I'm in Lagos, I can't buy something from someone in Abuja worth 100,000,000 cups of rice. How would I transport it? It's not easy to send.

But we are humans, and we always find a way. We can store our 100,000,000 cups of rice (real rice) at a rice bank, and then the bank can issue me a receipt showing 100,000,000 cups of rice (just paper, fake rice but can be exchanged for real rice). Or we can even go digital. We deposit our 100,000,000 cups of rice into the bank, and in my bank app, I would receive 100,000,000 cups of rice (just numbers in a computer, fake rice but can be exchanged for real rice). I can then send it to the person in Abuja, and he can go to the same bank branch in Abuja and withdraw the 100,000,000 cups of rice (real rice).

My major concern is, what if the rice bank app becomes very popular, like Opay and Monipoint, and everyone starts using it? If I go to my bank in Lagos to send you 100,000,000 cups of rice and you receive it in your bank app, you won't even need to go to the bank again. You can just send the 100,000,000 cups of rice to another person without actually needing to even touch the rice in the bank since everything is now digital. The problem is, what if the owner of the rice bank gives themselves 100,000,000,000 cups of rice in the app that they don't actually have in real life and starts spending it however they like? This is very bad because we are the ones who will suffer in the end. It results in the 100 books that used to cost 100 cups of rice now costing maybe 120 cups. This is human nature, and this type of scam can't be prevented yet. But remember, when things go bad as it always dose, at least we have rice to eat and not just papers.