What Happened To Nigeria’s Central Bank? -By Ibrahim Caleel

I so much miss Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the CBN Governor, not the Emir.

During his tenure at the Central bank, one could be certain of getting cash at every ATM visit. ATMs were dispensing. Banks weren’t having dummy ATMs.

Today, banks are tactically telling Nigerians to rely on the roadside so-called “POS Centers” more than ATMs. First Bank championed this nonsense with their FirstMonie Agent initiative. Sooner, all banks followed suit.

Sanusi lamido Sanusi, former CBN Governor

At the moment, roadside POS centers are opening even opposite bank branches. People have no option but to patronize them because of long queues at the ATMs.

A bank will have four to five ATMs, but only one will be dispensing cash. After some few hours, this machine will become “temporarily unable to dispense cash”. At the same time the POS center opposite this bank will have cash available.

These POS centers charge us for transactions made. The banks regularly charge for ATM Card maintenance and other charges.

I personally see this as a form of institutional and licensed corruption. The CBN is watching as commercial banks snatch money from Nigerians. This is one thing that I am positive would have never happened under an SLS-led Central Bank. Under SLS, we had fewer ATMs than now, but these ATMs were dispensing cash. They weren’t dummy metal boxes!

SLS didn’t have a perfect CBN, but customers had an excellent delivery of banking services. I miss him so much in that place. The institution that once supervised banking excellence, now supervises mediocrity and legalized extortion in broad daylight.

Arewa people shouldn’t be overwhelmed with whether POS centers are doing halal or haram transactions. We should be asking the CBN why commercial banks can’t run their ATMs efficiently in 2021!

Or are we saying this thing is here to stay?

Ibrahim Caleel