ByIfeanyi Onuba, Abuja
Friday, 31 Dec 2010
The Central Bank of Nigeria has said that it will not extend the December 31 deadline given to customers of Deposit Money Banks to update their records.
The apex bank’s Head, Corporate Affairs, Mr. Mohammed Abdulahi, who disclosed this in an exclusive interview with our correspondent on Thursday, expressed satisfaction with the progress so far made with the exercise.
He said, “As I am talking to you now, there is no extension but I don’t know what will happen between now and next week. We are satisfied with the progress so far made with the exercise.”
The apex bank’s disclosure came just as customers of the DMBs on Thursday made last minute efforts to get their accounts updated.
The CBN had on November 29, gave customers of DMBs one month to update their bank records or face the risk of being barred from having access to such accounts.
The period had commenced from December 1 and it is expected to end on December 31, 2010.
The CBN Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability, Dr. Kingsley Moghalu, had, while giving the directive, denied insinuations that the decision was targeted at witch hunting any politician. He said that, rather, it was part of the ongoing reforms aimed at sanitising the banking sector for effective service delivery.
He had said that DMBs had in the past faced challenges in their quest to obtain the necessary information from customers as required by the apex bank owing to two reasons.
The reasons, Moghalu said, had stemmed from the fact that information already obtained over the years might either be out of date or inaccurate; or that customers were reluctant to supply the required information primarily because they were not aware of its importance.
However, our correspondent, who monitored the exercise in Abuja, on Thursday, observed huge crowd that besieged the banks in an attempt to avoid being barred from operating such accounts.
For instance, at the United Bank for Africa Plc branch in Wuse, many customers were seen collecting and filling the forms from bank officials.
While some of the bank customers, who spoke to our correspondent, called for an extension of the exercise saying the notice was not brought to them on time, others frowned at some of the requirements that they would have to satisfy before being registered.
The situation is not different at First Bank of Nigeria Plc, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Zenith Bank Plc and Intercontinental Bank Plc, among others.
A customer of First Bank, who simply gave her name as Funke, told our correspondent that the one- month period was too small to carry out such an exercise.
For instance, she said that most of the customers that visited the banks for the update on Thursday did so because a text message was sent to their phones.
Funke blamed the banks for the last minute rush, saying that if the DMBs had sent these alerts to their customers during the time the decision was announced by the apex bank, the data of most of the customers would have being captured.
Source: Punch
