The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has revealed that it has so far recovered 89.2 billion nairas of customer’s money in Nigeria based on verified complaints that were investigated and found to be true as of June 2021.
The Apex bank also disclosed that Nigeria’s financial system was not in any form of distress as being rumoured stressing that the system was sound, resilient and stable as commercial banks were found to be safe.
The Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele made the revelation in Calabar during a 2- day Sensitisation fair with the theme:” Promoting financial stability and economic development ” aimed at keeping the public abreast of programmes, policies and interventions of the bank.
Emefiele represented by the Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, CBN, Osita Nwanisobi said the recovery which stands at 89.2 billion as of June 2021 was based on a complaint that 23,526 complaints they received from customer’s on bordering on charges and other related matters.
He also said that the insinuations that the Apex bank was planning to convert domiciliary/ dollar accounts to naira were false and unfounded.
His words:” The fair is targeted at keeping the public apprised and let them know the policies, programmes and interventions of the bank and how it benefits the people.
“Also the sensitisation is aimed at also disabusing all rumours being peddled about distress in the system, there is nothing like that.
“We want Nigerians to know that we carry out “banking examinations” and the results show that our banks are in very good condition and our financial system is stable, resilient, safe and sound. We want Nigerians to know that there is no iota of truth whatsoever in these rumours.
Speaking further, he said they wanted to engage the people in a bid to understand how the banks policies and interventions were affecting their lives adding that when Mr Emefiele took over as the 11th governor of the CBN he assured Nigerians that that bank would be a central bank.
“This sensitisation is part of ways to engage the people so as to understand how our policies, programmes and interventions are affecting them and as well as create a veritable platform to discuss and understand their challenges too through their responses and feedbacks,” he said.
He also revealed that the 89.2 billion so far recovered was based on complaints on issues on charges and other related matters.
He added that ” Like the presenter from Consumer Protection said, these are basically based on complaints by individuals ( customer’s ) that oftentimes there have been issues on the issue of charges and other matters.
“What we do is that whenever we get these complaints, they are thoroughly investigated, if they are found to be true, the CBN makes sure that these customers are properly refunded and we have so far recovered 89 billion naira.
On the intervention programmes, the CBN Governor hinted that they currently have about 37 programmes targeted at specific levels aimed at ameliorating the suffering of the people, rejigging the economy and boosting our health infrastructure especially due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
“We have healthcare interventions, commercial agric, discounted cash programmes amongst others, not just only in the name but it’s functionality. Since the Covid-19 experience, the global economy was shut down, it affected families and businesses as many were shut down too.
“First thing we did was to roll out interventions to mitigate the adverse effects of COVID-19 on the livelihood of the people, we also tackled health infrastructure, we considered research components all these and more were based on gaps identified and an effort to rejig the economy.
He also clarified the digital currency to be launched by CBN stressing that it would be properly regulated by the bank, unlike cryptocurrency which he said was issued by unknown entities without regulation and easily moves or shifts in value due to single tweets by individuals.
“Let me make it clear, cryptocurrencies are issued by unknown entities, no one knows who they are, nobody regulates them, nobody knows what they do, rather all they do is to issue the currencies and we( Nigerians too) have seen what happened on a simple tweet by one man.
” This is completely different from the digital currency that the CBN wants to issue, they would be under regulation by the Apex bank. So it would be regulated and can be used for monetary policy purposes and that’s a huge difference,” he said.
