Buhari opens CBN's first ever internet-enabled branch in Nasarawa State capital Lafia

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has inaugurated the first Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) internet-enabled branch in Lafia the Nasarawa State capital as part of an ongoing programme to extending banking services across the country.

According to an Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access survey published last year, only with 45% of Nigerians are banked, up from 40% in 2018.  To bridge this gap, the CBN and Nigeria's commercial banks are stepping up, mobile banking, the opening of physical branches and the use3 of the Internet to reach out.

Access to basic financial services is widely considered a critical building block in reducing poverty and promoting economic growth. In need of an economic catalyst to lift more than 90m of its population from poverty, Nigeria was listed among the globe’s top seven unbanked nations by a July report by BNP Paribas, a French international banking group.

According to Ayo Akinwumi, head of research at FSDH Merchant Bank, financial inclusion can ease Nigeria’s poverty rate because when people and small businesses are financially included they can have access to credit. He added that this will enable them to expand operations, employ more people and achieve what they would have not been able to achieve before when they were not financially included.

Addressing this headache, President Buhari, accompanied by the CBN governor Godwin Emefiele and Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State, President Buhari opened a new branch in Lafia. He added that the state-of-the-art smart building is an internet-enabled building built to bring the CBN closer to the people.

Mr Emefiele added that the new branch is one of the nine new internet-enabled offices of CBN constructed to ensure central bank has visible offices in Nigeria. Over recent years, Mr Emefiele has been promoting, mobile and Internet banking as a way of reaching it to the large number of unbanked masses.