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Banking with tears in Nigeria


Jide Osuntokun

 

Some years ago, there was a negative advertisement about the difficulty of banking in Nigeria. This advert showed a man with his mat and pillow entering his bank and when asked why he brought a mat to the bank, he retorted that after taking a number he would be able to have a nap before it was his turn. This was before the liberalization of the banking sector by the Babangida’s administration in the 1980s. From what is going on in the banking sector now, we seem to be back to the past when banking was a burden to be avoided. This is what Covid-19 and the inability or unwillingness of banks to respond appropriately has caused Nigerians. The practice in the urban areas now is for people to wake up and go to the banks to queue up in the wee hours of the morning and to take call numbers so that when operations begin one may go in early to transact one’s business and go away to do normal chores. But since most people have other things to do to earn a living, they find people to go to the banks to join the queues so that when the real people come, they will yield their places to them for a fee. In fact, a business has developed around the inconveniences created by the banks on the excuse of following coronavirus protocol to prevent infections. It is now clear by the size of the crowd assembled each working hour of the banks, that Nigeria is seriously underbanked. Only God knows how much money is kept in the informal banking sector under the beds and in people’s farms, gardens and attics by market women and men and petty traders and the petite bourgeoisie generally because there is just too much hassle going to the banks.

There is also this unrealistic expectation by the young people running the banks that people should conduct their banking transactions electronically. Because of this, a popular bank like GTB has relatively fewer branches than its competitors. Instead of GTB opening newer branches, it even closes some of its branches for up to week which it runs alternately with other branches for no clear reasons. It cannot be due to shortage of staff in a country where graduates are roaming the streets in search of jobs. GTB merely publishes on weekly basis which banks it will open and which it will not and tells its ever growing customers to go to its ATMs which most time never work because of pressure on the mechanical devices.  Some banks limit to N10,000 the amount of money one can withdraw from the ATMs. The result of this is disenchantments with a popular bank that if people have the alternative, they will quickly close their accounts and move on. Unfortunately there are few alternative options because very few people will go to the old antediluvian banks that existed in colonial days that have found it extremely difficult to innovate in their old fashioned dilapidated banking halls equally manned by elderly folks in their Victorian frocks and trousers and oversized jackets.

I will be the first to commend any institutions or commercial houses that respond scientifically to the Covid-19 or coronavirus pandemic. But the response must be measured so that the medicine does not kill the patients. There is growing hostility to banks by those who are not able to access their monies in the banks or even to deposit the sales of the day because of the multitudes besieging the banks. It is not every bank that has this problem. For some reasons people prefer to keep their monies in the banks of their choice and I think any bank should be happy to welcome as many accounts as possible and respond to people’s banking behavior and not force even illiterates into electronic banking in which they could be easily defrauded. Certainly, banks can afford to spend from their annual humongous profits on expansion of branches to alleviate the suffering of their customers now and after we would have overcome the coronavirus pandemic.

The banks must through services provided…



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