By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The Governor of Borno State, Mr Babagana Zulum, has expressed frustration over the absence of banking services in most of the local government areas of the state.
According to him, two of the 27 councils of the state, Maiduguri and Biu, have banking services, noting that insecurity in the state had forced many financial institutions to flee.
Speaking on Wednesday in Maiduguri, the state capital, at an extraordinary stakeholders meeting, the Governor said this issue has made it very difficult for residents of these communities to exchange their old Naira notes with the new ones, prompting him to direct the Borno State Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation to, in accordance with regulatory procedures, hastily establish branches of existing microfinance bank of the state across the councils.
Mr Zulum disclosed that the Ministry of Finance had been given a directive to ensure the recapitalisation of Borno Renaissance Microfinance Bank to qualify it to have the capacity to open these branches.
“At the moment, we only have two LGAs with banking services, and these are Maiduguri and Biu. The distance from most of the local governments to either Maiduguri or Biu is too long.
“Despite a great improvement of the security in Borno, there are still challenges for banks to start operations. Banking is a very delicate industry, and I am sure none of them is willing to take the risk of establishing branches in our LGAs for now.
“Therefore, to support our people, Borno State Government has to take the risk. I have directed the Ministry of Finance to ensure the recapitalization of Borno Renaissance Microfinance Bank to qualify it to have the capacity to open branches in all the 27 LGAs. This, I believe, will greatly alleviate the suffering of our people,” the Governor said.
He also ordered the Ministry of Finance to immediately come up with a template to organise and ensure people in rural communities deposit their old naira notes before January 31 deadline.
“I have convened this meeting to discuss how our people in the villages can get easy windows of depositing their money to the bank accounts as stipulated in the CBN’s new policy.
“The Ministry of Finance is hereby directed to mobilise the people and ensure nobody lost his money; you should facilitate ways through which people can voluntarily deposit their money into the banks in the remaining days,” Governor Zulum stated.
