Pure Bliss No Longer Tastes Good?

The CBN is to Blame

My First Encounter with the Divine Confection
In 2018, I travelled to Ogun state in the South-Western part of Nigeria on some business.
I planned to stay at a hotel, but Lara (not her real name), a lady friend offered me her
place to stay. I took her up on her offer not only because it would help me save the money
that I would have otherwise spent on a hotel room but also because Lara was quite
attractive, and I hoped that being in close proximity to her would give me the chance to
score with one I considered to be a strong eight.

A few days passed and the business that took me to Ogun did not go as I had hoped, and
I was disappointed, and I made plans to return home from Ogun state the following day.
That evening, Lara – in an effort to cheer me up – asked me to take a walk with her. We
had one of the more pleasant conversations in my life as we strolled that evening, and as
we walked, she stopped at a store and bought a pack of Pure Bliss biscuits. I had seen the
biscuits and wafers in stores everywhere back at home, but I never bothered to eat them.
Lara asked me to eat them – that they were unbelievably delicious, and I would be
hooked on them if I tried them. I had no interest in eating biscuits, but she badgered me
endlessly, and since I had no desire to displease her, I agreed to eat one of the biscuits.

As I held the confection up to my mouth, I caught a whiff of its creamy aroma, and as I
took the first bite, I realised that it tasted even more delicious than the aroma let on.
After we had eaten all that she bought; we went back to the store to buy some more. I
also decided to try out the Pure Bliss wafers and just like the biscuit, the wafers did not
disappoint. Each wafer stick was a perfectly cuboid shaped sandwich with the tastiest
wafer at the top and bottom layers with various layers of thick-cream filling and more
wafery goodness in between. The aroma – though more enchanting than the biscuit’s –
paled in comparison to the taste. To cut the long story short, those desserts were my
second-best experience on that failed business trip. I could not get enough of them.
Everyone who had them had the same testimony about them as I did; they were really
delicious. I binge-ate them so hard that I got sick of them after a few months.

One day in early 2022, I remembered how much I used to enjoy Pure Bliss products and
decided to treat myself to one biscuit and one wafer. They still cost ₦100 per wafer or
biscuit – same as they did in 2018. I tore open the wrap to find that the wafers looked a
bit smaller than I remembered. They had next to no cream filling, smelled less
appetizing, and seemed like they had been nibbled at by rodents. I would not have eaten
it if I did not unwrap it myself. I do not exaggerate when I say that to my great
disappointment, my beloved Pure Bliss wafers tasted how I assume a mildly sweetened
carton would; very stale and bland. The price remained same, but the quality had greatly
declined.
This phenomenon of declining quality is all too common in Nigeria. Some new product
or service is introduced, and the service is so good that one cannot seem to get enough
of it, only for the prices to rise and the quality to decline after some time.

The Central Bank of Nigeria is to Blame for this decline in Quality

If you ask 10 people why the quality of Pure Bliss and other products are in decline, 9 of
them are sure to tell you that the greedy producers are responsible. Most people blame
the greed of the makers of the products for increasing prices and or reducing quality so
as to make more profit. Nothing could be further from the truth. The culprit is The
Central Bank of Nigeria.

What connection does the CBN to the have to Pure Bliss and other products? Why should
the country’s apex bank be blamed for the decline in quality of biscuits? To understand
how the CBN is responsible, one has to understand the workings of the apex bank.

The Stated Goal of the CBN

The stated goal of the CBN is to stabilize prices in Nigeria. It is their goal to make sure
prices are neither too high nor too low. Addressing the futility and foolishness of this
goal is something that I will leave for another article. To achieve this pointless and
destructive goal, the CBN — like all apex banks – uses the MONEY SUPPLY. Simply put,
the money supply is the total amount of money in the economy. It is this money supply
the CBN uses to force Pure Bliss and other businesses to increase prices and reduce
quality.

How the CBN Operates: The Money Supply

As an individual, if I need money to purchase goods and services to satisfy my wants, I
have limited options; I can work, beg, steal or if I have the skill, make convincing enough
counterfeit Naira notes. Let us assume that I work for my money. This means that I
offered someone else a good or service, and in exchange, I was rewarded by the one I
served with money.

Businesses do the same; when they want money, they offer goods or services to people,
and the people pay them.

Government mostly steal the money through taxation when they need to embark on
projects or pay their workers. I do not call it ‘stealing’ by accident; what else would you
call it when people and businesses are compelled to give a part of their monthly earnings
or be forced by men with guns to go to prison. If given the choice to not pay taxes, would
people not take it? Would anyone willingly pay taxes if the government gives them the
option of not paying? Would they not rather keep their money and spend it on their
needs, re-invest or save it in a bank to make profit through interest? If you would rather
keep your money than give the government, then you agree that they take it from us
forcefully. If this forceful extortion is not theft, I do not know what is.
When the CBN wants money to buy things or loan to the government, they offer neither
good nor service like you, I, or businesses, they do not even forcefully extort taxes like
the government. They do something more sinister; they print money out of thin air. This
is neither a joke nor an exaggeration. They just type up a couple of billions into their
computer systems and spend it. This is referred to as ‘increasing the money supply.’
They increase the supply of money to their benefit by buying goods and services
produced by individuals and businesses, or by interest on loans given to the government.
This money supply increase goes by fancy names to hide what it really is. It is commonly
called ‘Quantitative Easing’ (QE), but in Nigeria, the nom du jour is ‘Ways and Means
Lending.’ Let me pose a question; what would we call it, if a man had in his possession,
technology that could print out Naira bills identical – in every way – to the ones issued
by the CBN? We would call such a man a ‘counterfeiter’ and would be correct to do so.
The only differences between a counterfeiter and the CBN are:

1. CBN staff are not arrested when they do the same thing as counterfeiters
2. CBN do the counterfeiting at a much larger scale than your everyday
counterfeiter.

The CBN has printed over ₦22 trillion in less than a decade. I doubt all the counterfeit
operations in Nigeria combined can successfully counterfeit a tiny fraction of that sum.
CBN money supply increase is legalised counterfeiting.

The Effects of Money Supply Increases: Rising Prices and Falling Product Quality
Money supply increase is taught at university as a legitimate way of doing things, it is
defended by intellectuals and government officials and some even laud it as a way to get
out of recessions and to keep the economy running. It is a good thing that reality is not
determined by consensus nor by the position one holds in society.

As has already been stated, the counterfeiter differs from the CBN only in scale and the
fact that the CBN is legally encouraged to counterfeit while the counterfeiter is penalized
for doing the same. That stated, how exactly does an increase in the money supply affect
the economy? Simply put, it causes prices to rise (what is incorrectly called inflation). It is
almost intuitive to most that more money chasing fewer goods will cause the prices of
the goods to rise, but to understand why this is, one must first understand one of the
features of money. Money is a good. A good is simply defined as “anything that we can use
to satisfy our wants.” Since we use money to get the things we use to satisfy our wants,
then money is a ‘good.’ More goods means more satisfaction of needs. If there are only 1
million cars in Nigeria, and an angel gifted Nigeria with 10 million more cars, the total
number of cars in Nigeria would rise from one million to eleven million cars. Obviously,
this is good for Nigeria. Same applies to bread; if there are 50 million loaves of bread in
Nigeria, and some angel miraculously multiplies the bread and we now have 100 million
additional loaves, leaving Nigerians with 150 million loaves of bread, this would mean
more Nigerians have more bread to eat and more people are better off than before. More
products are always more beneficial than less. That being the case, one might be tempted
to think that one additional trillion Naira is better for the economy. Afterall, if the CBN
prints one more trillion Naira. Nigerians are one trillion Naira richer. As I am about to
demonstrate, this reasoning – when applied to money – is wrong.

Money differs from other goods in the sense that it is not used up or consumed by like
other goods. Money does not ‘finish’1 as other products do. A loaf of bread, a bunch of
bananas, and other goods are used (consumed) by people. If I buy one pack of Pure Bliss
wafers at ₦100 per pack, the seller of has ₦100 and I have my wafers. The wafers are
eaten by me, but the money remains with the seller. It is not used up like I used up the
wafers. The wafers are consumed but the money remains. That same ₦100 can be used
by the wafer seller to buy a bottle of zobo to quench his thirst. The same ₦100 – which
was initially mine – still remains (in the hands of the zobo seller) but both the wafer I
bought and the zobo the wafer seller bought have been consumed. This means that the
quantity of products is reducing while the money remains the same. This reduction in
the quantity of products creates scarcity. As is known, scarcity is the reason why goods
are expensive. Water is essential to life but is ridiculously cheap but precious stones and
metals which have no value in terms of the ability to keep us alive are some of the most
expensive goods on the planet. Therefore, when counterfeiters (legal or illegal) create
more money, they create more scarcity and cause the prices of goods to rise. They create
more scarcity by causing the goods to be used up faster than they normally would.

As more money is introduced into the system by the CBN, more people have more money.
They use this money to demand the diminishing (due to consumption) quantity of goods
in the economy. As goods diminish faster due to increase in demand, unnatural scarcity
occurs, and this scarcity causes prices to rise. This is how the CBN causes prices to rise.

Those who claim that CBN counterfeiting is good for the economy and can boost
productivity might attempt to refute this by claiming that the created money goes into
the production of new goods and services. People who make such claims are wrong
because;

• The time it takes to make new goods and services can range from hours (for
simple products) to years for complex products like perennial crops and other
agricultural products (many of which happen to be necessary for the production of
other simple products). Meanwhile, it takes only seconds for the CBN to use their
computers to type trillions of Naira into existence. This means that the created
money will cause high prices long before the new goods are produced.
• The production of these new goods and services by the created money also require
already existing goods and services to be bought by the fake new money to use in
the production of the new goods and services. This means the new goods would
even be more expensive than before because the cost of making the new goods
would be higher.

1
This expression “does not finish” is not a grammatical error but is a saying that Nigerians use in everyday conversation.
There is no way out of it, increasing the money supply only makes things more expensive
for everyone. Why the CBN, and all central banks do this despite its disastrous outcome
is a most sinister issue that I hope to thoroughly address in another article.

Anyone who insists that money creation is good for the economy, must be consistent
and agree that counterfeiting is also good for the economy and must advocate for the
decriminalization of counterfeiting. If CBN money creation is beneficial, then
counterfeiters are not criminals but are actually economic saviours.

How is the CBN Responsible for the Poor Quality of Pure Bliss Biscuits
As has already been established, as the CBN counterfeits, all costs go up, including the
costs of the materials for making Pure Bliss products. People often wrongly think that
producers can just directly pass on every cost to the consumers. This is obviously not
true. If I were told on that day in 2022 that I purchased the Pure Bliss wafers that it was
₦300 instead of ₦100, I would not have bought it. Pure Bliss products – delicious as they
were before the CBN destroyed them – are not essential to life I would have walked away
or looked for a cheaper alternative. Producers know this, so rather than pass on the
increased cost of production to consumers, they would compromise on the quality. They
would use less cream filling, less sugar, they would use the cheapest possible type of
flour in the most miserly of ways when making the wafers. They might fire the former
chef who made the wafers and hire a cheaper and less experienced chef. There are many
ways for them to cut the production costs just so that they can still afford to maintain
the ₦100 per pack of Pure Bliss.

Conclusion
This decline in Pure Bliss quality is not limited to Pure Bliss products. Every Nigerian can
testify of the declining quality of most goods and services. To stay in business, producers
might reduce the quality of the product, or reduce the quantity of the products, or raise
the prices or all of these economic horrors combined. Look around you and you will
observe that not only goods, but quality of services are also getting worse.

It should be stated that this legalized counterfeiting is not exclusive to the CBN. The
commercial banks are also heavily involved in this inflationary racket but just like my
solution to this problem of endless price increase and quantity and quality decline, I will
save my criticism of them for another article.