The governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode has charged the Central Bank of of Nigerian (CBN) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) to focus on employment generation inclusive financial system rather than requesting for approval letters for commercial loans for States from the federal ministry of finance and the Debt Management Office (DMO).
Ambode gave this charge at the 9th annual bankers committee retreat with the theme, ‘Improving financial access, job creation, and inclusive growth in Nigeria’, held in Lagos.
“So while all of you are very focused on how the digital revolution is affecting financial services, I want to challenge you today to go faster. We need the CBN and NIDC to work together with the banks and other players in the system to decide together what type of financial system will really impact employment and bring more people into the formal financial system”, he said.
Ambode was concerned that in Nigeria, mobile money has been slow to take off. Mobile money usage in particular has remained low, increasing from 0.7 million adults in 2014 to 0.9 million in 2016. This shows that the uptake is still very low when compared to the number of adults, about 58.2 million, who were mobile phone owners in 2016.
Welcoming the participants, Godwin Emefiele, governor of CBN said the committee intends to support measures that will deepen penetration of financial services in the country to those who are financially excluded from the system.
“Our mandate at the Central Bank is to ensure that we create a framework that will support the build-up of a new ecosystem that connects deposit-taking banks, telecommunications companies, merchants, and ICT providers to the general public. These stakeholders can all work together in providing financial services to a large segment of our population that receive little service or are excluded from the formal financial system”, Emefiele said in Lagos.
Hope Moses-Ashike
