Customers set to fight CBN, banks over BVN

Chairman of BCAN, Dr. Uju Ogubunka, told Vanguard
yesterday that the association was meeting this week to,
among other things, marshal out course of action to protect
customers’ right to full and unrestricted access to their
account, irrespective of their BVN status.
Several banks had sent out messages to their customers last
week warning that access to their accounts would be barred
unless they were BVN compliant by October 31.
Spokesman for Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Ibrahim Muazu,
told Vanguard yesterday that denial of access to non-BVN
compliant accounts had gone into force and the apex bank
would not extend the deadline for compliance as it did last
June, when the first deadline expired.
20.8m accounts registered
He explained that CBN was satisfied with the level of
compliance achieved as at last week Monday, which showed
about 20.8 million bank accounts registered as against
about 52 million active bank accounts with the various
banks.
On the 32 million unregistered accounts, he explained that
the apex bank believed that since most bank customers
maintain multiple accounts, the linking of all the accounts
would give an average of about 40 million captured in the
BVN net, adding that “we are home and dry.”
He also noted that a move round the banks, during the last
day of the week, showed there were no queues of customers
on BVN lines in the banking halls, indicating, according to
him, that most bank customers had complied.
However, Ogubunka, who was the immediate past chief
executive of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria,
CIBN, said BCAN was not opposed to BVN, but it would not
allow the rights of its members to be abridged by any policy
to the extent of denying any bank customer access to his or
her account.
He also explained that many bank customers may have been
unable to comply due to one reason or the other, adding that
such should not automatically lock the customer out of his or
her bank account.
BCAN faults CBN on 32m accounts claim
Ogubunka, though admitting that many people have more
than one account, added that the figure of 32 million, over 60
percent, non-compliant account was too large to be attributed
to multiple account holding.
“We have called an emergency meeting of BCAN executives
to review the situation, among many other industry issues,
affecting bank customers this week,” he stated.
CBN, in its last week’s statement, had downplayed the
calculations that 32 million accounts had not been
registered, but admitted that some customers were yet to
link all their accounts to their BVN.
He said: “The point that needs to be stressed here is that it is
not enough to just enrol for BVN. The process is duly
concluded only when all accounts owned by a bank
customer are linked to his or her BVN.
“From the foregoing, it becomes clear that the insinuation of
about 32 million accounts holders yet to enrol was simply a
misrepresentation that fails to take into consideration the
multiple accounts holding habit of most Nigerians.”
The apex bank also declared that if anyone had not enrolled
for BVN, it cannot be attributed to lack of facilities, but out of
his/her individual volition and that by all indications, it can be
safely said that the BVN exercise by the Bankers’ Committee
in collaboration with CBN had proved rather successful.
The statement also disclosed that Nigerian banks’ customers
in the Diaspora had taken advantage of more facilities
provided for enrolment in more locations abroad.
CBN, in collaboration with the Bankers’ Committee,
introduced the BVN on February 14, 2014. This initiative of
the Bankers’ Committee is aimed at ensuring unique identity
for all bank customers and other users of financial services
in the country by the use of the customers’ biometrics as
means of identification.