Bank Officials As Public Enemy

 By Levi Obijiofor

When you hear about economic hardships battering the citizens of a country, you need go no further to search, locate and understand what the experiences might look like. We have the exact situation on the ground in Nigeria. The current cash crunch across the country, impishly engineered by the Central Bank and aided by commercial banks, has paralysed human and business activities in Nigeria and pulverised the welfare of ordinary citizens. This is an unsolicited experience no one in Nigeria would like to relive. 

There are visibly many players in the current game of infamy playing out in the country. At the head of the mischief-makers is Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele, closely followed by chief executives of commercial banks, and supported by point of sale (POS) or point of purchase (POP) vendors. They constitute the merchants of evil. They have made life unbearable for ordinary people. More important, the CBN and commercial bank officials must take full responsibility for the current economic instability. Their reputation has been sullied but they do not care about reputation.

If you were a bank customer in Nigeria and were asked to rank the following people and professionals, in terms of unethical conduct and dishonesty, which of them would top your list? 

Would you pick the dishonest and unfeeling bank manager, the corrupt police officer, the strong-willed army/naval/air force officer, the dubious Customs officer, the morally despicable pastor or priest, the heartless lawyer, the unlicensed and unqualified medical doctor, the junk journalist, the crooked construction engineer, the callous nurse/midwife, the licentious and lecherous university teacher, the devious trader or market woman, the mechanistic carpenter, the unprincipled chef, the headline-chasing newspaper editor and publisher, the fraudulent accountant, the histrionic advertising or public relations manager, the coldblooded pickpocket, the penny-pinching and amoral prostitute, or the duplicitous commercial vehicle operator? 

The persons listed above are not exhaustive, but chances are that you might select the pickpocket or prostitute as the vilest, most unethical, most dreadful and most dishonest person. Your choice would have been made based on how these people are perceived in public. Regardless of what happens, the point to keep in mind is that person perception is often far from reality.

When a similar study was conducted in Australia in 1996, the outcome was a rude shock to everyone. The study requested respondents to rank various professions in terms of how they were perceived for ethics, trust and honesty. Surprisingly, newspaper journalists were ranked second from the bottom. That study revealed for the first time a terrible image problem for Australian journalists, despite the essential role they play in their society. In that poll, newspaper journalists were ranked very low – they managed to beat used-car salespersons. 

Follow-up studies have been conducted since that time but the image of Australian journalists has not improved significantly. A study of Australia’s most trusted professions conducted in 2021 showed that doctors were the most trusted, followed by nurses, paramedics, firefighters, scientists, police officers, teachers, pharmacists, pilots and veterinarians. The same study placed journalists second to last (number 29), just one place ahead of politicians who were ranked last at number 30.

In the perception of the Australian public, journalists are still seen as untrustworthy, dishonest and unethical. The underlying message is that Australian journalists are not regarded highly by the public.

Each society places a different value on its institutions. Consider the following. In December 2000, the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, regarded as the world’s largest selling newspaper, asked 2,000 people to list the institution they trusted most. The prime minister was ranked last. That said a lot about the extent of confidence the Japanese people placed on their politicians. Imagine the kind of ranking President Muhammadu Buhari and his ministers would receive if that kind of poll was conducted in Nigeria. 

Still in December 2000, a Gallup Opinion Poll conducted in the United States about the most trusted institutions showed that the military were ranked top and television was ranked 14th. 

I do not believe that a similar poll to that conducted in Australia would produce a similar result in Nigeria in terms of the image of newspaper journalists. In Nigeria, the public image of journalists is yet to be tested officially through a public opinion survey. But for bank officials and particularly university lecturers who engage in frequent rounds of sexual harassment of female students, a practice that has become widespread, we do not need such a test because there is unassailable evidence that shows that the battered image of university lecturers and bank officials is a direct outcome of their unethical and dishonest conduct in their professional roles. 

I am reminded of what a recent female graduate of the Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, Owerri, said on video while thanking God for her success that was also attributed to the magnetic power of her sexual organ. 

For a very long time, we associated bank managers in Nigeria with honest and ethical conduct. Whenever you wanted to complete an official form (such as public examination form or visa/passport renewal form), you were directed to approach a bank manager or a police officer or a pastor to initial that application form. That requirement was based on the norms that existed and still exist in civilized societies where the bank manager or pastor or police officer represented in real terms an emblem of honesty, faith and good character. 

In Nigeria, the public no longer perceives the bank official as emblematic of honesty, integrity, principles or values. In fact, the bank manager and other bank officials are held in low esteem. They are demonised, derided, and portrayed as the ultimate agents of corruption and everything loathsome in the society. These perceptions are legitimate considering current experiences in which citizens are denied access to the new naira notes that are hoarded by banks, while members of the privileged class are given excess new notes. 

It is evident that bank managers are key players in illegal hoarding or stockpiling of the new naira notes. Investigations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), along with spot checks conducted by CBN officials have exposed the collusion by banks to deny citizens their right to access their money in the custody of banks. 

Similarly, I do not think university lecturers in Nigeria would stand the test of morality. Some of them see their female students as a kind of collateral or reward they should receive on earth. 

Corruption has eaten deeply into the souls of bank managers in Nigeria. The damage is beyond repair. Nobody can fix the problem. Training and character building based on ethical reorientation will not resuscitate the damaged character profile of despicable bank managers and officials.  

We cannot fight unethical and dishonest practices by bank managers and officials of other financial institutions. They are so deeply soaked in the ocean of corruption. Corruption is widespread in Nigeria, a dysfunctional society in which there is no law and order, a society in which people do things any way they like. In that environment, no one is accountable to anybody. No one is responsible to anyone. It is a country of “anything goes” in which the culture places a higher value on wealth and property acquisition. That is the pull or inducement that attracts bank managers and officials to continue to engage in corrupt practices.

*Dr. Obijiofor is a commentator on public issues

Cashless Policy And The Cashless Banks Of Nigeria

 By Ezinwanne Onwuka

It was in October 2022 that the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, announced its intention to redesign the currency, which it said was in the best interest of Nigerians to check terrorism financing, counterfeiting and imbalances in the fiscal space, and to enable the apex bank to take control of the currency in circulation.  

*Buhari and Emefiele 

As a result of the currency redesign, the CBN also set the maximum cash withdrawal limit via the Automated Teller Machines and point of sale, PoS, agents at N20,000 per day for individuals subject to N100,000 per week, instructing commercial banks to load only denominations of N200 and below into the ATMs. 

Naira Redesign: In Whose Interests Are These Politicians Fighting?

 By Charles Okoh

There can be no telling the measure of pressure faced by Nigerians at a time as this. What is not in doubt is whatever the intent of the presidency in pursuing the redesign of some currencies, the discomfort Nigerians suffer now, if nothing is done about it might as well get to a level where the people can no longer bear the pains and inconveniences any more. At that stage, nothing is predictable.

In spite of repeated denials by Godwin Emefiele, that the naira redesign is not political and not targeted at any politician, the reaction of the members of the National Assembly and governors, especially of the APC, suggest that, indeed, there may be more to it than meets the eye.

Have Nigerians Truly Suffered Enough?

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

In the twilight of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, a drama played out in the Red Chamber of the National Assembly as senators squared up in a crunch tenure elongation. The day was May 16, 2006, one year before the end of Obasanjo’s constitutionally guaranteed maximum eight years of two terms. But Obasanjo didn’t want to leave, hence the need to amend the Constitution with an open ended-tenure. 

As pro-tenure elongation senators plotted their third term agenda, anti-Obasanjo forces also arranged their cards.

On the day of the second reading of the Amendment Bill, the Senate President, Ken Nnamani, called out his colleagues one after the other and his predecessor, Adolphus Wabara, became the starboy. 

Politics Of New Naira Scarcity

 By Sola Oni

On Thursday, February 2, 2023, during a zoom interview on Channels TV, the National President, Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria, Mr Victor Olojo, was put on the spot over the current naira crisis. The Central Bank of Nigeria mandates banks to pay customers with the new naira. The banks complain of inadequate supply of the new notes and innocent Nigerians are groaning under the yoke of the buck passing between the CBN and the commercial banks.

Responding to a question that the Point of Sale operators were taking advantage of the naira scarcity to charge those desperate to withdraw money huge interest, Olojo explained that his members  also had to source for naira notes in many places, including filling stations at a cost.

Nuisance Around New Naira Notes

 By Ray Ekpu

When Mr Godwin Emefiele announced in October last year that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) would be redesigning the N200, N500, and N1000 notes many Nigerians might have thought that they would have an opportunity to touch clean naira notes. The truth is that the common people of Nigeria never have a glimpse at clean naira notes in Nigeria.

 Only the rich, the very rich, get to hold clean notes. They are also the ones who buy mint fresh notes for spraying at parties. The rest of us just lick our lips when the extravagant rich engage in that obscene vulgarity at weddings, birthdays, chieftaincy ceremonies. As they spray stylishly the notes drop on the floor and other eager sprayers march them as they take their turn to display their vanity.

Naira Redesign, Queues And The Quest For A New Nigeria

 By Elvis Eromosele

The amount of queuing Nigerians have been subjected to in the last couple of weeks is unprecedented. It is equally unbecoming. It’s almost like the country had gone back four decades. Fights have broken out in queues at bank facilities, filling stations and INEC and LGA offices across the country. There are trending videos of people stripping naked in protest inside banking halls, others hitting each other with queue dividers and one person has been confirmed dead inside a banking hall, somewhere in Asaba.

Nigerians born in the 2000s, GenZs, should be forgiven for thinking the end of the world is here. On a typical day, a person will queue to collect new currency notes at the bank, rush to queue at the filling station to buy supposedly subsidised petrol at exorbitant prices and then drive to the closest INEC office to queue for permanent voter cards, PVCs. This is not sustainable.

Tinubu Vs Atiku: A Cautionary Tale Of Self-Destruction

 By Dan Onwukwe

Like a broken family whose members would  prefer to destroy their father’s inheritance rather than share it, shame has become a passé to the managers of the Presidential candidates of the All Progressives Congress and that of the Peoples Democratic Party, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar. As the Feb 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections draw feverishly near, the desperation in the camps of these two presidential candidates seems to have reached a new low.

*Atiku and Tinubu 

With the many gaffes and seeming lack of tact by Tinubu on the campaign hustings, a sense of ennui has set in. His desperate efforts to be the next President of Nigeria appear to be bogging down. But he keeps blowing hot. As respected columnist Sonala Olumhense wrote in the SUNDAY PUNCH of January 29, if there’s one political party that ought not to be on the ballot in the February/March elections, it’s the ruling APC.  

The World Ahead 2023: Whither Nigeria?

 By Marcel Okeke

The World Ahead 2023” is the 2022 end-of-year special publication of The Economist (of London) in which the journal reviewed the global economy in the outgoing year and made detailed projections about 2023, including what issues are most likely to dictate the trends in the coming year. It says: “After two years when the (COVID-19) pandemic shaped the immediate future, it is now the Ukraine war.”

The journal gave four things to think about for 2023, namely: (1) the impact of the conflict; (2) the struggle to control inflation; (3) chaos in energy markets; and (4) China’s uncertain post-pandemic path. Going granular in its analysis, the publication gave ten themes and trends for 2023—thus: all eyes are on Ukraine; recessions loom; climate silver lining; peak China; divided America; flashpoints to watch (India-China, Turkey-Greece); shifting alliances; revenge tourism; metaverse reality check; and New year, new jargon.

Emefiele Versus The Politicians

 By Andy Ezeani

The full story of how Godwin Emefiele almost abandoned his prime position as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to join the giddy race for President of Nigeria via the overloaded rough vehicle of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is yet to be told.   

*Emefiele 

Was he nudged on into a caper and conned along the way? Or was the adventure a true expression of his ambition and spirit of adventure? Whichever one it was, does not really matter. The man is an adult and therefore, takes responsibility for his decisions and actions. In this case, it was his choice to try the APC gamble. For good measures, he gathered the whooping N100miliion purchase of form fee that he threw into the unforgiving APC machine that never returned any money that entered its vaults.

Poor Governance Should Stop

 By Terry  Adeniji

The government at all levels in the country is collapsing, the non-state actors have hijacked the reign of government from the people in power, especially the regulatory bodies in charge of our critical sectors, and the poor citizens are made to bear the brunt of their non-performance.

In the area of security, the Department of State Services, the police, and other security agents are helpless as the terrorists and bandits continue to terrorise people, killing, maiming and collecting ransom in millions of naira paid in cash and yet, the same huge money finds its way back to the bank and all these security agents can’t track it. Something is clearly wrong with our system, and yet nobody is resigning.

Does APC Deserve Another Tenure In Aso Rock?

 By Dan Onwukwe

It is not too late to begin to ask these questions: How does democracy protect itself against a ruling party that has almost ruined the country and destroyed lives and livelihoods of those it was elected to provide for their security and welfare and, yet is asking for their mandate for another tenure? Does that political party deserve your vote?

*Buhari, Tinubu and Adamu

Are you better off today than you were seven and a half years ago? Should you allow the same snake bite you twice? These questions should not be ducked. They are not rhetorical questions. At a time like this, what we need is truth simply spoken. That is why the forthcoming elections, beginning with the Presidential poll, are of critical importance. 

Gov Soludo’s Pettiness And Unconscionable Tactlessness

 By Robert Obioha 

 In an election season, political campaign can come in diverse forms, including crude use of language to possibly settle an old score or even attempt to diminish someone’s rising fame and political relevance. Even lending support to one’s favourite candidate can be subtly or brazenly done depending on one’s choice of words and deployment of language, which can also be brutal and lacking tact and diplomacy. 

*Obi and Soludo
Although politicians have been tasked by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Peace Committee and other stakeholders to engage on campaign based on issues and desist from campaign of mudslinging and calumny, but every day, the polity is suffused with hate speeches, diatribes, incendiary comments, ethnic stereotyping of some leading presidential candidates all in an effort to pull some of them down. 

Soludo, Where Are The Coins?

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

As Central Bank Governor (2004 – 2009), Professor Charles Soludo woke up one morning with a big dream. He wanted to mint coins for the use of Nigerians as legal tender. Those with better acquaintance with the psychological and cultural disposition of Nigerians told him pointedly that the policy was dead on arrival. They explained that given the behavioral pattern of Nigerians, the policy would be viewed by the majority as a needless burden.

*Soludo

But Soludo, who often appears and sounds as if every audience before him is a class of freshmen Economics students, dismissed with characteristic arrogance and cocksureness every contrary opinion. 

He went to town marketing the great benefits of the coins, harping on their durability and how billions of naira will be saved from not having to frequently replace well-worn notes any more since the coins would last till almost eternity. Seeking to talk him out of the clearly unrealistic policy was like singing ballad to the deaf!

The Buffeted Naira

 By Luke Onyekakeyah

The recent announcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the introduction of newly redesigned N200, N500 and N1, 000 banknotes, has political and economic implications. Like a thunderbolt, the move has jolted many people, particularly, politicians who promote money politics. Those who have amassed naira and dollar waiting for the forthcoming elections are biting their fingers.

The move is a masterstroke against corrupt politicians, who have hoarded huge sums of money for vote buying during the 2023 general elections. By redesigning the naira and releasing it barely a month to the elections, the CBN may have played the trump card to frustrate all the permutations by politicians who banked on the hoarded naira. That way, the CBN may have contributed to the country having a more credible election in 2023.

The Politics Of Naira Redesign

 By Robert Obioha

The plan to redesign the naira by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has, like any other issue in Nigeria, been riddled with controversy and even politics. Ordinarily, the redesign of the naira for the envisaged benefits, which many Nigerians are interrogating, would not have generated the needless acrimony if adequate consultations were made and major stakeholders carried along. 

The differing opinions on the issue from those serving in this government is unnecessary. It is an avoidable distraction. It also shows the level of incoherence among ministers and officials of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. It is unthinkable that such a change in redesign of the naira is being contemplated without the knowledge of the minister of finance even if the law establishing the CBN did not expressly stipulate so.

Nigeria: The Warnings From Sanusi And Danjuma

 By Lasisi Olagunju  

The Washington Post of May 29, 1979 reported an exchange between President Idi Amin Dada of Uganda and an agent of a British money-printing firm. The Ugandan dictator asked the man to help him print two million Ugandan shillings worth of 100 shilling notes. The Briton accepted the offer but "gingerly" asked Idi Amin how he was going to be paid for his services. "Print three million and take one million for yourself" was Amin's answer. 

*Danjuma 

The Ugandan leader had a minister of foreign exchange. Before Idi Amin's engagement with the Briton, the minister had informed the president that “the government coffers are empty.” Amin looked deeply at him and retorted: “Why (do) you ministers always come nagging to President Amin? You are stupid. If we have no money, the solution is very simple: you should print more money.”

Abuja’s Priorities Are Beyond ASUU’s Demands

 By Rotimi Fasan

The Federal Government through the Central Bank last week released $265 million to airline companies operating in the country. These are mostly businesses owned by foreigners. The aviation industry like most other sectors of the economy has been going through a very rough patch in the last few months. There had been a lot of hue and cry about the scarcity of aviation fuel which mostly affected local airlines.

*ASUU Leaders and the Federal Government Team 

But the scarcity of foreign exchange has translated into bad business for the major airline companies that have not been able to repatriate profits that are trapped in naira in local banks. After weeks of lamentation without any improvement in their situation, a number of them, including British Airways and Emirates, had taken the hard decision to halt their operations in the country beginning from the end of August 2022. 

The decision of these airline companies, should it come into effect, would amount to a virtual lockdown of the international routes of the Nigerian aviation sector. For a country that lacks a national carrier, this would be disastrous. As footloose as Nigerians, especially the elite, tend to be, it is both ironic and scandalous that they rely almost exclusively on foreigners for their international junketing. Yet our airports display some of the most exotic private jets, not one of them can be repaired or maintained locally, that are left idle while incurring avoidable debts on airport tarmacs and hangers. 

When It Looks Like Poverty Has Found A Home Here

 By Austin Oboh

When the United Nations World Food Programme recently reported that Nigeria faces imminent food crisis, owing mostly to insecurity in the North and other parts of the country, I suddenly remembered that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had, in the last few years, spent massive funds on agricultural programmes nationwide, especially in the North. At some point, the Federal Government boasted that the country would soon be eating what it produces. I was profoundly happy about the prognostics of a better day, like every other Nigerian.

Because if there is anything I detest, it is the unexplainable habit of importing what can be produced here. I have never understood the madness, and never will. You can, therefore, imagine my sadness that what I feared all along was going to happen – that billions of laudable investment in food production might be lost to unaddressed social problems. It ought to have been clear to the Federal Government that a nation in war is a nation in crisis. So, where was the root of the government’s optimism when it was obvious to all, especially to those in power, that the state of insecurity in the country had reached such putrid state that nothing would be spared the foulness? 

But the Nigerian govt has always behaved like it is nothing to worry about – at least, official attitude betrays this. The Federal Government has been blowing hot and cold in its war against terrorists and bandits, threatening to crush them at some point only to turn round the very next moment and appeal to them to drop their guns, especially when it appears the criminals are gaining the upper hand.

You can call this the weapon of threat and blandishment. Nothing the Federal Government has done in its military campaigns against terrorists and bandits have made as much impact as to generate the kind of optimism government officials often express. I have personally long concluded that those in power, cushioned by their privileges against the reality, have never truly understood what the country is going through. That, possibly, is why they believe that food programmes would thrive and the Nigerian people would soon become self-reliant despite the raging wars. 

And in the same spirit of political naivety – which has been so much on display since 2015 – the Federal Government, on Tuesday, inaugurated another laudable programme which, however, is doomed to fail like others before it.

I am referring to the inauguration of the National Steering Committee (NSC) of the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy (NPRGS). The development filled me with a mix of elation and sadness, because, again, I realised that it has no chance of making much impact. 

At the event, the president repeated his outlandish promise to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in ten years, according to him, with a well-researched framework for implementation and funding, as though previous implementation and funding frameworks were perfunctorily designed. 

Now that I think of it, poverty reduction programmes by successive governments in Nigeria have become a tedious experience to me even though I cherish their cosmetic desire to improve the lots of the increasing millions whom they have helped impoverished. Government’s resort to such ad hoc solutions in the face of profoundly enduring social problems does in itself demonstrate a poverty of thinking or a blatant refusal to confront the bitter realities of our time. Before I am misunderstood, let me make it plain that I am not against efforts to cushion the impact of hard times on people; I only object to the habit of ignoring the root and treating the symptoms of a disease. 

The stop-gap measures called poverty reduction programmes, now treated as permanent measures in Nigeria, have been with us in the last three decades without intrinsically changing the social conditions of the same category of people for which the programmes have been instituted. So, it was a languid feeling of déjà vu for me on Tuesday when the Federal Government came up with its stampeded version of poverty reduction, or poverty pacification – an expression which appears more apt, for me, in this context. 

Have our leaders considered the advice of Jim Yong Kim that dealing with poverty is a much more serious affair than constructing financial drains? The former World Bank president saw the matter more broadly as a factor of economic growth. “We will never be able to end poverty,” he said, “unless economies are growing.” 

Now, this opinion directs our attention to the need to look more directly at critical systemic factors embracing security, infrastructure, financial policies, education, justice system, and health – all of which are in varying phases of dysfunction at present. Why do we have to continually drive resources into superficial projects which only promise temporary relief for a few when, indeed, what is needed is to resolve the hydra-headed crises in our country today? 

Consider, for example, the dilemma in the agricultural sector already alluded to. According to a recent report by the World Food Organisation, Nigeria faces imminent famine as a result of insecurity in most parts of the country which has made farming hazardous. 

Why would the Federal Government continue to spend colossal funds on projects that would not resolve the complications in those areas mentioned, knowing too well that the gains would eventually be vitiated? Insecurity, darkness, and bad roads are the biggest challenges and causes of poverty in Nigeria. Whoever resolves these resolves the poverty that the people have known for ages and which has currently reached its most pathetic point. 

I am not unmindful of Buhari’s promise concerning the new programme but my argument is that these programmes have become effete in Nigeria on account of the endemic tendencies that hold progress hostage – the toxic environment of insurgency, banditry, and regional turmoil. What the Federal Government ought to do in the circumstances is not to assume that the country’s state of anomie will give way for ad hoc programmes to succeed. This is wishful thinking. The government must, as a matter of urgency, reinforce its war against insurgency and banditry and then initiate the process of addressing the socio-political upheavals in some parts of the country with the aim of restoring peace for progressive schemes to succeed. 

The present government’s insistence on political rigmaroles has jeopardised the economy despite all the efforts so far made. A new World Bank report says that Nigeria under President Buhari will lose the economic gains it made in the last decade at the end of 2021. 

“By the end of 2021, Nigeria’s GDP is likely to approach its 2010 level, thus reversing a full decade of economic growth,” the bank in its new report said. 

The World Bank’s projection comes as Nigeria strives to recover from the multiple recessions that hit the country in 2016 and 2020. 

The bank, in the report, said that there would be a constant decline in the country’s GDP per capita despite recovery from recession, projecting the country’s population to grow faster than its economy. 

The bank further predicted that despite the country’s gradual recovery from the 2020 recession, Nigerian masses would continue to suffer the adverse effect of the economic downturn. 

While applauding President Buhari for taking bold steps to reform the country’s deteriorating economic condition, the bank advised the government to deepen its recent reforms that allow private sector investment for speedy economic recovery. 

Apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, the controversial fiscal and monetary policies of the Buhari administration and the Central Bank were also largely blamed for the recession. 

So, here we are – the land of the poorest but ironically the country with the most extravagant government in the universe – striving to erase poverty by consolidating it. The more the Federal Government sets up schemes, ostensibly to improve the people’s lives, the deeper they sink into deprivation and squalor. Has the government ever realised this? How come, as the years roll by, Nigeria and her people depreciate and degenerate despite countless schemes targeted at empowering them?

Isn’t it time we stopped fooling around with schemes which look like they were hatched in the Academy of Lagado (courtesy, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels)? They are just drainpipes and possibly some ephemeral relief to a miniscule patch of the earth. Now, it all seems as if poverty has found a comfortable home in Nigeria. The socio-political morass here is benumbing. I have lived long enough in this country to know what I am complaining about. I was born, bred, and (unfortunately) battered here. So, let no one tell me about what I already know.

Even as I make my observations, I am aware that economic experts hold the view that poverty eradication programmes could significantly impact on the lives of the beneficiaries, but what am concerned about here is the overall effects on the masses? I would rather have a government that adequately funds education, pursues equality and justice, addresses all social ills in the society, including lopsided appointments, and realistically drives infrastructural development to a government that selectively dishes out handouts. 

*Oboh is a commentator on public issues

Discrimination Stoking Poverty In Nigeria

By Bayo Ogunmupe

Lack of enlightenment, poor adaptation of technology and poor telecommunication infrastructure have been identified as reasons for financial exclusion in Nigeria. This lack of financial inclusion caused Nigeria to lack behind its sub Saharan African (SSA) country peers.

Many of our colleagues in the SSA like Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal are better than us in terms of global system of mobile communication skills education and adaptation of technology. Every telecom company in Kenya has  helped financial penetration through free skills training and financial inclusion.