Customers on Monday besieged various
banking halls in Lagos, Abuja and other cities for their biometric
registration in order to get their unique Bank Verification Numbers 48
hours to the deadline for them to do so.
When our correspondent visited banking
halls in Lagos on Monday, hundreds of customers seeking to do their
biometric registration were seen in very long queues.
Banks visited in Lagos Island, Isolo, Ikeja and Egbeda were full of customers seeking to obtain their BVNs.
The overwhelming crowd forced the
management of the branches of some of the banks to deploy more staff
members for the BVN registration exercise.
As of Monday afternoon, long queues of
customers seeking to obtain their BVN were still seen in several bank
branches across the state.
Bank officials in Abuja, Port Harcourt
and other major cities told our correspondent in separate telephone
interviews that the long queues were recorded in the various branches.
About 14.6 million bank customers will be
denied access to certain banking services beginning from Wednesday if
the Central Bank of Nigeria goes ahead to end the registration exercise
today (Tuesday).
As of last week, only 14 million bank customers had registered for the exercise.
Going by the current statistics from the
Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access, an organisation committed to
deepening financial inclusion in Nigeria, only about 28.6 million adults
in the country have bank accounts
However, the CBN said on Monday that it
would not extend the June 30 deadline set for the completion of the
registration of bank customers.
The Director, Corporate Communications,
CBN, Mr. Ibrahim Mu’azu, told our correspondent in a telephone interview
that the bank would not extend the deadline because enough time had
been given to members of the public to get registered.
As a result, he said effective Wednesday
(tomorrow), banks would begin to deny some specific banking services to
customers who lacked the BVN.
Mu’azu said, “For now, the deadline will
not be extended. We have given customers enough time to do the
registration. For customers who fail to register before the deadline on
June 30 (today), they will not be able to enjoy some banking services,
including access to loans and Internet banking services until they are
able to get registered.
“The registration will continue but the
penalty for failure to register within the stipulated time, which
includes denying unregistered customers access to certain banking
services, will commence on Wednesday.”
The CBN spokesperson reiterated that
although unregistered customers would still have access to their bank
accounts, they would be denied other services.
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