One will wonder what direction our financial institutions are heading to with the recent economic hardship faced by citizens; the least expected act is the further milking dry of Nigerian low income earners’ purse.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was recently accused of illegally hiring sons and daughters of Nigerian influential or highly placed top officials with juicy appointments that news is still waxing some waves around and will surely be given less attention, until it dies off. The most treacherous and disheartening issue is the proposed N100 monthly charge on every ATM Card in the country by the CBN. This charge is said to be separate from the existing N65 charge after the third withdrawal within the same month. One will wonder what direction our financial institutions are heading to with the recent economic hardship faced by citizens; the least expected act is the further milking dry of Nigerian low income earners’ purse.
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Technology is evolving and we are gradually advancing, recently the implementation of Treasury Single Account (TSA) has been said to yielding success in curbing unremitted funds bravo, also the compulsory Biometric Verification Number (BVN) has been to an extent successful, where most account owners have been able to link all their various bank accounts together, it is expected that all bank account numbers have real identity of whom it belongs to and how they are operated. With these achievements so far, and with the level of power to access information and privileges vested in the hands of our CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, one will expect that he be able to craft the charges on pay according to your earnings or transactions, where some account owners are never to be charged a kobo because of their earnings and low level account operations.
You will agree with me that some accounts when charged with N2000 monthly will be like taking a drop of water from a sea, whereas even a N10 reduction from a low level income owners’ account, say maybe an account balance of N3000 will become N2990 with N10 reduction, for the fact that there must be a minimum of N1000 balance in the account, this will result in totally affecting the intended amount N2000 to be withdrawn, forcing the withdrawal of N1000 or N1500 if and only if the ATM dispenses N500 denomination. It is a big problem to the majority who are low income earner ATM users, with our current economy in Nigeria a proposal from the CBN should be targeted on how those ATM users with less money transactions will be exempted from paying a single kobo because they deserve to be eased their burden, cancel all their charges and deduct from accounts with high income earners.
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Interestingly with the BVN in vogue, it is expected that the CBN proposes collaboration with Nigeria Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), since it is expected that majority of Nigerian citizens have bank accounts and to operate such accounts all must have registered with a BVN which entails fingerprints, bio data and snapshots similar to the INEC voters’ registration requirements. As we all know that all ATM cards are very effective because once a withdrawal is made it automatically effect changes and balance the users’ account, it will not allow withdrawal on accounts without sufficient funds. Why won’t the CBN propose to INEC as two Federal Government bodies to correlate their databases and filter out all the BVN registered owners in the Bank BVN Database that are also found in the INEC database so that the bank will assist in providing a special ATM-like card that is BVN embedded, it will serve as National Identify Card, also as ATM Card for all accounts connected to it during BVN registration and finally and most vital to our growing democracy it will serve as Voters Card with no expiry date. This said card can be issued by all banks in the whole of Nigeria with ease of collection (we have more bank branches all over the country than we have INEC offices) banks can even create mini-collection centres, certainly banks will do this job neatly and it should be renewable from any branch in the country whereas a lost card can be automatically deactivated like it is done in ATM cards. You will agree with me that citizens will have only one of this card without fake or duplicates, Nigerians will appreciate that it will serve as National Identity Card that can be used both home and abroad and in a nutshell Nigerian citizens will be more careful with the card during election periods as it is associated to their bank accounts, they will simply safeguard it.
CBN kindly propose that which is helpful to our citizens and beneficial to our nation.
We should think outside the box and make Nigeria Great!
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