Alebiosu: Accessible finance is the way out of poverty

Olusegun Alebiosu, the CEO of FirstBank says inclusive access to finance is the most critical factor in combating severe poverty in Nigeria and globally.

“The most important factor of production in the 21st century is finance. Whichever way you look at it, the easiest way to get out of poverty is access to finance,” the financial expert told Arise TV during the 79th United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

Alebiosu, who first took the reins of FirstBank in April maintains that poverty is fuelled by a lack of human and infrastructural resources that limit the social mobility potential of many Nigerians.

“Most times, poverty comes from lack of access and lack of resources. If you want to go to school and are unable to finance, if your parents are unable to raise the money, if you’re unable to feed yourself, they all contribute to [poverty].”

In Nigeria, 40.1 percent of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63 percent are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022.

The National Bureau of Statistics reports that multidimensional poverty is higher in rural areas, where 72 percent of people are poor, compared to 42 percent of people in urban areas. Alebiosu says inclusive financial initiatives could help.

“We have seen how access to finance can help people even in remote locations to advance their economic interests. If you have a cooperative society in a rural community and they are empowered with loans for them to be able to trade and you carry out that experiment over a 10-year period, you can compare that community to the next community where they don’t have that kind of financial leverage.

“The difference you’re going to see will be economic development, empowerment, poverty eradication [in the first community] and in the other community where they don’t have that, you will see endemic poverty,” said the CEO.

In 2023, FirstBank’s extensive Firstmonie agents’ network in Nigeria surpassed 232,000, with over 55,000 women agents providing financial services in their communities. Alebiosu sees this as an attempt to address gender inequality, which he believes is an equally pressing issue that demands attention from world leaders.

The bank CEO stressed the critical need for the development of human resources to tackle the widening economic gap between developed and developing nations, emphasising the United Nations’ focus on sustainable development and equality, particularly in areas such as gender, climate action, and living wages.