Osinbajo to CBN: Work with fintechs to end naira scarcity

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and commercial banks to work with all financial technology companies (fintechs) and mobile money agents to address the scarcity of naira notes in the country.

Osinbajo gave the admonition during a meeting with fintech investors and ecosystem players at the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Friday.

According to a statement issued by his spokesman, Laolu Akande, the Vice President, who expressed worry over the difficulty experienced by Nigerians in getting the new naira notes, called for possible ways of mitigating the hardship.

His words: “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.

“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.”

Osinbajo further assured Nigerians that the challenges are being addressed and would be solved very soon.

Speaking on some of the concerns arising from the redesign of the new naira notes, the Vice President 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.”

“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 added.

Osinbajo stated that while there has always been a certain failure rate in online banking and money transactions, they have become more difficult with the increase in the number of transactions congesting the system.

“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,” the Vice President said.

He, however, thanked the fintech stakeholders for their commitment and contributions, saying: “It has really been revealing hearing all your thoughts about what is going on, 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.”

In their separate remarks, some of the fintech stakeholders made valuable suggestions on how to address the current situation in the country and offered to support government at all levels with the required expertise to address the bottlenecks.

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.

The Star