 A welcome back now at the Central Bank of Nigeria, NIN, BVN, Linkage Directive offers a much broader sense of increasing the number of financially included people, especially if it is very much strictly implemented. Once this is achieved, chemists who previously relied on stolen information to conduct fraud and transactions will face a bigger challenge. Joining me now to discuss further on some of the peculiarities and issues is the National President of the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents of Nigeria, Amben, Fasasi Sharafa-Din, Atonda. Many thanks for joining us, Fasasi. Yeah, good morning. Good morning, my host and viewers across the country. Good morning. Thank you for having me. All right. Let's talk about the BVN, NIN, Linkage. The deadline is almost here. And then what's the current situation as we speak? Yes, of course, because of the fact that it's actually one of very good policies to ensure sanity in our payments industry. There is a need for all of us to have sufficient KYC, know your customer in form of identity, national identity and BVN. They are very physical to protect our payment system from a lot of hazards. So we are in total support of that. But the current situation now is the challenge of access points. There are no much provisions for where the masses of our people can have access to those services of fresh elements of NIN, fresh element of BVN, and also in terms of the modification of the two databases. Because we have this understanding that as of today, only the commercial branches are enabled to modify, you know, verify BVN across the country. And we are aware that over 300 local governments in Nigeria are without commercial branches. So that would be a very serious work. And we can see that the banking are becoming crowded already. Before it becomes a thing of a stampede at the banking house, the sorry situation that we experienced during the cash crisis, there is a need for halls to come and think ahead of time and prove a solution. And that is what Amban, a session of my money on bank agents in Nigeria, is currently embarking on. Okay, let's talk about that now for a bit. Let's try to understand in a circular that I've seen so far, you've talked about a neighborhood financial inclusion center. And you said it's bringing critical financial services closer to the excluded communities in Nigeria. Let's talk about that and the need for it. Why is it imperative right now? Okay. We have observed that we need to support the Central Bank of Nigeria, because most of our regulators underestimate the complexity of Nigeria. You know, what we are seeing on the data is what we are working with. The majority of people are not aware that if you are seeing 200 million populations on the database, that is telling you that the actual population is actually more than 200 million. So if we are looking at about 135 million excluded in Nigeria, you should know if you're having that on the database, you should know in reality you have times two of that in reality. So anytime we are rolling out these policies, we need to also put into consideration, you know, how to cover for those gaps because most data are not actually captured formally. A lot of people are in informal sectors. So we need to have that understanding. So Sibion has announced a 30-day, it's sort of a 30-day document for over 134 million Bankibu Niger to get their accounts with BVN. And over 200 million Nigerians with NIN should also get their NIN before the deadline. S, their accounts will be locked. And you know, when it has to do with money, people, you know, being restricted from having access to their money needs to be able to create a sort of pricey. So Amban is, you know, thinking ahead and jumping and creating additional access points. We are proposing to have over additional 1,000 access points across the excluded local government in Nigeria, where we will create a sort of an hub, a neighborhood financial inclusion hub. Instead of Nigerians to be looking for, where will I do NIN after finishing that? Where will I do BVN? If I have a SIEM or number problem, where will I do my SIEM swap or SIEM linking? So we want to bring all the needed services to the neighborhood of Nigeria. At least one in the local governments. So that is the idea about neighborhood financial inclusion and to support the existing infrastructure. The question would be, this is a great plan, laudable as it is now. So what have you done and what feedbacks are you getting from the authorities that these are, you know, the NEAPs and the NIMC as regards this, including Amban in Robent and all of that. And then how would you tackle maybe if the issues arise, issues of maybe some agent or so who may want to just do some sort of practices that might not really be in tandem with what the goal is intended to achieve in the first place? Yeah, thank you so much. In terms of partnerships with enablers, if you look at the list of participants in this project, we see financial inclusion as a stakeholder and an industry agenda, not a bank's agenda, not a bank's elune agenda. Because for financial inclusion, you actually require the services of all the stakeholders. Financial literacy, we need to come in. The NGOs that are specified, that have protocols on that, we have to come in and enlighten the people. It's not about opening bank accounts. There are a lot of bank accounts that have been opened and almost about 60% of them are inactive. So how do you, first of all, educate the people they need for them to be included in the banking sector? So we are bringing them, then you need the services of telecommunication companies, the big shots in this was so that they can get their SIM. If there is a problem on the BBN, maybe they have lost their SIM to replace their SIM. You need the telecommunication companies. We are reaching out to most of them to come and participate in this. We are also a partner to NCC to ensure that we are able to work together. To NIPPS, we have had our initial meeting with NIPPS in conjunction with all other critical stakeholders. And we are also reaching out to them to enable most of those critical services. CBN, we are also interfacing with them. We have strong collaboration with CIBN, Charter Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, who are also satisfying agents to participate in this project because this project is not for just any agent. They must be a professionally trained agent. They must be agents that know that they can lose their certification if anything goes wrong. So that will take me to that answer of security. How are we going to ensure professionalism? So first of all, we are starting with CIBN certification and the training is starting this Thursday. That will be handled by the key guys in CIBN and also the NIPPS. So all industrial institutions are part of this. So we are starting with that and also NIPPS with also the training. And the beauty of technology is that once technology is programmed to request for certain documents before you can amend any database, then it makes it easier to control. Nobody can override the system. So it is as easy as technology-driven processes backed up by certified and work-trained agents. All right. I wanted to share with us about some of the NFIC goals that you mentioned so far. You talked about achieving about 24 million bank transfers, 16 million BVN. Can you just throw more light on that? Yes. As of today, out of about 134 million bankable Nigerians, we only have about 59.9 BVN. So we have a gap of about 74 million Nigerians excluded without BVN. So that is the gap we need to cover in 30 days. And the current infrastructure, the bank branches today, with their procedures, with the way they work, they cannot meet up with that gap. So part of what we are programmed to do is to roll out about a minimum of 100 agent bank documents to come to that home and deliver a minimum of about 50 to 100 BVN registration daily. And when you do that for the next 30 days, you are achieving about 40 million, I mean 60 million BVN in addition to what you know you have currently. That will close the gap of the 74 million a year. The same to the NIN, we are also projecting because as of today, NIN, NIMC has actually disconnected all private partners, front-end partners, they call it since August last year. That means as of today, they are only relying on their state offices and the local government offices to carry out enrollment, which are actually not enough and they cannot meet up with that gap in NIN. As of today, we have about one zero for NIN enrollment in Nigeria out of estimated population of 200 million. That means we have about 96 million gap that we need to also cover in the next 30 days. So we are working with NINC to see how they can key into this program and enable our trained and certified agents to deliver these services. And you will agree with me that agents, the capacity of agents to achieve this in little time is no doubt. If you remember before 2021, for NIN, Nigeria government's infrastructure through NIN was able to deliver only about 0.5 million enrollment in 10 years, more than 10 years of their existence. And when they involved us in 2021, within the space of two years, we are able to move the figure from 45 to 100 million NIN enrollment. And also when NIN involved agents across Nukesia, they are able to also scale from about 10 to 20 million enrollment, you know, to 59, where they are today. So the capacities, our spread, our equity, and our smartness is no doubt to deliver on this figure. All right, I'm sure they are no doubt about it. Let's try and streamline it very well so we can get more clarity. You talked about stationed and mobile approaches. Can you tell us about those approaches very quickly? Yes, we have, because we are in the informal sector, we have the understanding and, you know, dynamics that exist in the informal sector. Today, the advantage of bank branches is the traders, the artisans, they find it very difficult to leave their markets and move to the bank and queue to enroll. So we want to take that neighborhood, apart from the fact that we have stations, which are for the working customers, people that have the time to come to that hub. We also take it to them. So that way you will not have busy enough NIN or DVN enrolls or tied to your account. When we use mobile bank to go and cover village markets and also all the local trainings, you know, of a particular local government, we want to enter the interlands. These are what we have been doing over the years as we can see to do it. All right, we wish you all the best in the approach and by so doing, the Nigerians will be financially included. And of course, the issue of insecurity and theft and frauds that have plagued them, the banking and financial sector for quite a while will actually be stemmed, you know, in the board. Thank you so much for your time and thanks for what you're doing at AMBAN. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right, my guest has been the national president of the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents of Nigeria, AMBAN, FASASI, ATONDA. And together, we're looking at financial inclusion, the need for, you know, to bring it back closer to the people as even as the deadline approaches. That's the size of the show for today. I am Justin Academy. Many thanks for being there.