By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A report recently released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has showed that the number of contract staff in the Nigerian banking industry stood at 45,350 as at December 31, 2019.
According to the report, the number increased 5.03 percent from the figures realized in the third quarter of last year and marginally rose by 0.25 percent year-on-year.
Business Post gathered that in Q3 2019, the total number of contract staff in the sector stood at 43,180, and 45,238 in the fourth quarter of 2018.
In the period under review, according to the data released by the stats office last week, the total number of persons employed by banks in the country were 103,610.
Of these figures, 184 are in the executive cadre, 18,180 in the senior cadre, while 39,896 are in the junior cadre.
When Business Post put these categories of the workforce in percentage, it was discovered that contract staff accounted for 43.77 percent of the total employees in the nation’s banking sector, 38.51 percent accounted for the junior level, 17.55 percent accounted for the senior cadre, while 0.18 percent accounted for the executive category in Q4 2019.
In the preceding quarter, Q3 of 2019, the total workforce of the banking sector was 101,435, comprising 186 executive staff, 17,671 senior staff, 40,398 junior staff and 43,180 contract staff.
In the fourth quarter of 2018, the total workforce of the industry stood at 104,669 consisting of 201 in the executive level, 18,119 in the senior level, 41,111 in the junior level and 45,238 in the contract category.
Meanwhile, the NBS said in the last quarter of 2019, data on Electronic Payment Channels in the Nigeria banking space revealed that a total volume of 893,681,888 transactions valued at N48.54 trillion were recorded and it was discovered that NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) transactions dominated the volume of transactions recorded, pulling 342,636,006 valued at N29.69 trillion.
Cheques pulled 1,936,030 worth N1.111 trillion, ATM recorded 202,373,808 transactions worth N1.651 trillion, POS recorded 129,574,015 transactions valued at N964.3 billion, Web had 28,827,240 transactions valued at N133.7 billion, mobile payments had 159,423,943 transactions worth N1.687 trillion, REMITA recorded 13,757,571 transactions valued at N5.908 trillion, while Central Pay had 153,370 transactions worth N1.4 billion.
Also, in the report, it was stated that in terms of credit to private sector, the total value of credit allocated by the bank stood at N17.19 trillion as at Q4 2019.
A breakdown showed that Oil & Gas and Manufacturing sectors got credit allocation of N3.42 trillion and N2.62 trillion respectively to record the highest credit allocation as at the period under review.
Dipo Olowookere 
Aduragbemi Omiyale