At a time financial inclusion penetration is seemingly weak, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has listed factors that suggest failures on the side of the federal government and commercial banks as key reasons for the low feat.
In his presentation at a recent forum organised for finance correspondents in Lagos, the Director, Banking and Payment Systems Department, CBN, ‘Dipo Fatokun listed the challenges to include cyber insecurity; dearth of infrastructure; low level of information and communications technology usage; privacy protection issues; unsanctioned use of customer data; and social apathy towards the use of e-payment platforms.
According to him, “It is important to note that the above challenges, among a few others, have resulted in the country being 40 per cent away from the National Financial Inclusion Strategy of achieving at least 80 per cent of financial inclusion by the year 2020”.
However, experts who studied CBN’s presentation, observed that majority of the issues highlighted at the forum by the apex bank point accusing fingers on some MDAs of the federal government and complacencies on the side of commercial banks after all.
In the views of a retired banker who pleaded anonymity, he grouped the listed challenges into two and noted that while issues bordering on infrastructure, ICT usage, and unsanctioned use of customer data can be traced to weaknesses of MDAs in doing their statutory functions, matters concerning cybersecurity and social apathy towards the use of e-payment platforms should be the duties of banks to do the needful in other to remain relevant and healthy.
Explaining more on the regulatory framework for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) which was introduced in April 2018, Fatokun averred some provisions of the regulatory framework for USSD such as the authentication measures for transactions, International Mobile Subscriber Identity, date of SIM swap, date of device change and International Mobile Equipment Identity, among others, were meant to make the channel more effective.
Another expert and ICT consultant, Mr. Wahid Adekoya argued that the best was to drive financial inclusion in Nigeria is to deepen broadband penetration and make data services cheaper and effective.
