CBN Recovers N89.2bn from Commercial Banks over Customers’ Complaints

Bassey Inyang in Calabar

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, has disclosed that as of June 2021, the regulator has recovered about N89.2 billion from commercial banks in the country following investigations and verified complaints from customers of affected banks.

Emefiele, who said this yesterday in Calabar, at the opening session of a two- day sensitisation fair with the theme: “Promoting Financial Stability and Economic Development,” also disclosed that contrary to uninformed comments from some individuals, the nation’s financial system was not in any form of distress, more so, as commercial banks are safe.

Emefiele who was represented at the event by the acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, CBN, Mr. Osita Nwanisobi, said the recovered funds were based on 23,526 complaints received from customers bordering on irregular charges, and other related matters.

“What we do is that whenever we get these complaints they are thoroughly investigated and if they are found to be true, the CBN makes sure that these customers are properly refunded and we have so far recovered N89 billion,” Emefiele said.

The CBN governor also used the forum to dispel fears making the rounds that the apex bank was planning to convert domiciliary or dollar accounts to naira, saying such fears were founded in rumour and blatant falsehood.

He said the sensitisation fair aims at providing adequate information on programmes, polices and interventions of the CBN.
“The fair is targeted at keeping the public abreast and let them know the policies, programmes and interventions of the bank and how it benefits the people.
“Also the sensitisation is aimed at also disabusing all rumours being peddled about distress in the system. There is nothing like that.

“We want Nigerians to know that there is no iota of truth whatsoever in these rumours,” Emefiele said.
He said the sensitisation exercise was also designed to make members of the public understand how CBN polices and interventions were affecting their lives.

On its intervention programmes, the CBN boss said the apex bank currently has about 37 initiatives aimed at ameliorating the sufferings of the people as well as diversifying the economy.
“We have healthcare interventions, commercial agric, discounted cash programmes, amongst others, not just in name, but are functional.

“Since the Covid-19 experience, the global economy was shutdown, it affected families and businesses as many were shut down too.
“First thing we did was to roll out interventions to mitigate the adverse effects of COVID-19 on the livelihood of the people; we also tackled health infrastructure, we considered research components, and all these and more were based on gaps identified and an effort to rejig the economy,” he added.
The CBN Governor also spoke on the proposed digital currency, stressing that it is different from crypto-currencies.

“Let me make it clear, crypto-currencies are issued by unknown entities. No one knows who they are, nobody regulates them, nobody knows what they do, rather all they do is to issue the currencies and we (Nigerians) have seen what happened on a simple tweet by one man.

“This is completely different from the digital currency that the CBN wants to issue, they would be under regulation by the apex bank. So, it would be regulated and can be used for monetary policy purposes and that’s a huge difference,” the CBN boss said.