Olufemi Adeyemi
Worried by the difficulty experienced by Nigerians in
getting the new naira notes, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Friday met with some
players in the FinTech space, exploring possible ways of mitigating the
hardship.
Specifically, the vice president urged the Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) to engage financial technology companies (fintechs) as well as
mobile money agents to address the issue of getting new naira notes across the
country.
According to the VP, “you need cash to pay for transport.
For instance, in Abuja how do you take ‘drop or along’ or use a Keke NAPEP
without cash, or buy foodstuff on the road or in canteens, or even buying
recharge cards?
“Parents with kids in public schools give money daily to
their children for lunch; most commerce is informal, so you need cash for most
things,”.
During the interactive session with a number of FinTech
investors and ecosystem players, the Vice President said that the Central Bank
of Nigeria and the commercial banks should work with all FinTechs that have
mobile money agents, not just some of them, in order to reach the farthest places
in the country.
According to him, “it seems to me that banks must engage
their mobile money operators , FinTechs with mobile money licenses and many of
them have micro-finance bank licenses now and already have a network of mobile
money agents or human banks or human ATMs (as they are sometimes called) who
are responsible to them and they can supervise by themselves. They can do
currency swaps and open bank accounts.”
The VP spoke just as the President in a meeting with some
All Progressives Congress (APC) governors at the Presidential Villa, assured
the nation that the challenges are being addressed and would be solved very
soon.
Speaking further about some of the concerns arising from the
redesign of the new naira notes, the VP stated that more disturbing is the fact
that after depositing your old notes, there are no new notes, so people
everywhere in the urban areas and rural areas simply have no money.”
The Vice President acknowledged that there are logistical
challenges that have to be addressed by the CBN and the banks, especially from
the point of view of the average Nigerian and those in the hinterland who
hardly use any electronic platforms.
He also observed that while there has always been a certain
failure rate in online banking and money transactions, they have become even
more difficult now with the increase in the number of transactions congesting
the system.
His words: “so where in the past you used POS or any of the
electronic platforms, you had maybe 20%-30% failure rate, now because everyone
is trying to get on those platforms, obviously, the failure rate is much more
and the problems are much more pronounced.”
He thanked the participants at the meeting for their
commitment and contributions, noting that it has really been revealing hearing
all their thoughts about what is going on in the country.
“Our country just simply needs to have the quality of advice
that I have received, today.
“We really need to make progress even as we make efforts to
deal with some of these issues confronting us today”, he added.
In separate remarks, some of the players made valuable
suggestions on how to address the current situation in the country and offered
to support the government at all levels with the required expertise to address
bottlenecks associated with the problem.
They suggested that USSD fees and the cost of data be
reduced, while regulators should remove floor prices and called for relieving
choke points in online transactions by cutting out some of the technical
procedures.