By Chinenye Anuforo
The Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions has screened Mrs. Aishah Ndanusa Ahmad and Mr. Edward Lametek Adamu for reappointment to the positions of Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Recall that, President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday had renominated the two and asked for the confirmation of the upper legislative chamber.
Appearing before the banking committee, senator Uba Sanni who is the chairman of the committee in his opening remarks stated the purpose for the gathering was to screen the nominees of Mr. President adding that the committee would be engaging the nominees on several issues relating to their background, qualifications, experience and CBN policies, especially the cashless policy and newly introduced cash withdrawal limits.
In her speech on the country’s cashless policy, CBN’s director-general of financial system stability, Mrs, Aisha Ahmed gave a historical account of how the cashless policy was first introduced in Lagos in 2012 before it went into force across the country.
“Since then, Nigerians have continued to embrace the cashless policy by using electronic channels for their transactions, whilst the Nigerian payments system and telecommunications infrastructure continued to develop.”
She spoke of the significant growth in variety and number of financial access points expanding from just bank and MFB branches to include agents.
She stated that agents could perform an increasing variety of transactions including cash in cash out, bill payments and even account opening. Under the CBN’s SANEF initiative, agent network had grown to 1.4m agents which agents available in every local government in Nigeria. She stated that whilst the growth in the network was not even, there was representation in every state.
She added that in furtherance of its mandate to develop an efficient payments system, the CBN had continued to license more financial institutions including allowing the telcos to participate in financial services through the Payment Service Bank license, recognizing their extensive technology platforms and wide agent network.
Fielding questions from the committee, she reiterated the various options open to Nigerians to perform financial transactions including mobile money, USSD, Internet banking, mobile apps, e naira, agents and mobile POS etc. All of these would ensure that Nigerians would seamlessly adapt to the cashless policy to enable financial inclusion and economic growth.
In her closing remarks, she pledged the CBNs commitment to ensuring that Nigerians in the rural areas and informal sector are not disenfranchised, stating that the Bank would be flexible in its monitoring and implementation of the new cash withdrawal limits.