As the target year for achieving 80percent financial inclusion approaches, the need for concerted stakeholder effort has become apparent and the imperative to accelerate progress towards the target has heightened, hence the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) has approved the posting of corps members to financial institutions.
The Financial Inclusion Governing Committee had requested for a posting of National Youth Service Corps on its policy against posting corps members to financial institution and was granted approval, the Central Bank of Nigeria said in its Financial Inclusion Newsletter, released on Friday, 9th August 2019.
Almost seven years ago, the central bank in collaboration with stakeholders conceived an ambitious target and as a result, it launched the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS), aimed at reducing the financial exclusion rate of adult population from 53 percent in 2008 to 20 percent by 2020.
According to the apex bank, the secured approval to post NYSC members to financial institutions is to support financial inclusion drive particularly to Women, Youth, Rural Areas, North and MSMES.
“The approval which is strictly for account opening purposes for unbanked Nigerians would be for 2019 and 2020,” the lender said.
The financial institution regulator added saying “affected corps members will undergo specific training on financial education and financial literacy to enable them undertake financial inclusion as a primary assignment in the service year.”
Checks by BusinessDay revealed that before now, corps members were not allowed to serve in banks and other financial institutions since the ban by the Federal Government in November 2011.
The then Minister of Youth Development, Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, had announced the ban during his visit to the NYSC Orientation Camp in Paiko, Niger State. Reason being that corps members posted to the organization were used “to provide cheap labour.”
For the central bank to achieve its 80 percent financial target, it would have to bridge Nigeria’s 16.8 percent inclusion gap in less than five months.
According to the 2018 figures by EFInA, Africa’s most populous nation had 36.8 percent of its adult population excluded from the financial cycle, this translates to 36.6 million people but the apex bank plans to drive this down to 20 percent by end of the year.
A dive into the data by the central bank revealed that joint 23,900 corps members are expected to be posted to the 4,752 branches of Deposit Money Banks (DMB), 898 Microfinance Banks and 7774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) across the nation.
By December 2019, the corps members are also expected to open 4.78 million new bank accounts; 3.8 million bank accounts by the 19,008 that will be posted to DMBs, 359,200 from the 1,796 that will be posted to MFBs and 619,200 from those that will be serving in LGAs.
“The on-going peer educator Programme would be harmonized with the new strategy and those to participate will now be part of the financial inclusion Community Development Service (CDs) Group,” the apex bank explained.
According to the lender, modalities for the implementation of the programme are being developed and it is set to commence in October 2019.The modalities would include the needed training, monitoring and incentives system to achieve the objectives.
In a bid to aggressively and sustainably ramp up access to financial services to support low income earners and underserved and unserved population, the National Financial Inclusion Steering said it approved the conduct of an Account opening week across the geopolitical zones in the country.
The approval was given at the 8th meeting of the National Financial Inclusion Steering committee which held on Thursday 25th July, 2019.
The event will feature location of financial access points in commercial locations; massive publicity by radio and print media to ensure widespread knowledge and mobilization by State Government. The account opening week will promote and support poverty alleviation and economic development.
Following the account opening drive, there will be financial literacy and education on savings, credit, insurance, capital market, product, pension and other services to ensure that there is active transaction in the new accounts opened.
Recall that the apex bank had recently addressed a letter to Microfinance Banks informing them of a new target for the MFBs to ensure each of their branches each are able to open 774 new bank accounts per annum.
“Consequently, all MFBs are hereby requested to implement the above resolution and disseminate same to all their branches (where applicable) to ensure concerted efforts towards achieving the overarching target of 80 percent financial inclusion by the year 2020,” the CBN instructed.
In January 2019, the apex bank also unveiled a revised version of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy in which it projected that there would be about 500,000 mobile money/bank agents available to serve about 105 million adult Nigerians by the year 2020. The figure translates to about 476 agents per 100,000 adults.
Less than five months to the projected deadline, financial institutions in the country have however enrolled a joint 65,753 mobile agents, data obtained from the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) showed.
This is 86.85 percent less than the 500,000 mobile agents which are going to serve about 105 million adult Nigerians. If the industry regulator is to meet the target by 2020, it would have to enrol about 434,247 agents in five months.
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