•BVN should be open-ended, but it is imperative that every account holder is captured by the present window
With less than 40 percent registered barely a month to go, it seems all is far from well with the apex bank-ordered current Biometric Verification Number (BVN) registration exercise.
Giving an update last week, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Director, Corporate Communications, Mu’azu Ibrahim, disclosed that only 20 million out of the 52 million active bank accounts in the country have registered. That is a whopping 32 million yet to acquire the BVN as at the end of September. For the 20 million already enrolled, the CBN spokesman further observed that 14 million are linked to the BVN as at September.
For an exercise launched with so much fanfare on February 14, 2014, and which was initially planned to end by June 30 this year, it must be disappointing that the shift in the deadline, by four months, did little to change the situation. We wonder if this is not by itself a measure of how biometric-weary Nigerians have become.
Today, all manners of agencies – public and private – are known to mount the siege on the citizens for the same biometric information, while hyping the same grand claims about delivering fool-proof identification systems. Yet, what we have seen over the years are miserably poor outcomes, after expending enormous resources – in cash and productive man-hours.
Given the current level of compliance, it seems highly unlikely that the October 31 deadline will be met. And if experience is anything to go by, Nigerians can expect to see chaos and bedlam in the coming weeks, as customers besiege the banking halls to beat the deadline. A further extension of the deadline would therefore, in the circumstance, seem absolutely imperative.
The latest development obviously throws up a number of salient issues. First, has the apex bank – as indeed the Bankers Committee as a whole – done enough to create the awareness required for its success? The second point is whether the Bankers Committee couldn’t have come with a better, less disruptive way to get the job done; and third, whether the idea of the deadline, and the threat of sanctions for failure, make any sense at all.
On the first, we agree that there is a lot to be said of Nigerians’ penchant to dither on important issues such as the BVN registration. It is however the CBN’s primary responsibility to mount a matching public enlightenment response as well as a pragmatic programme to secure the needed buy-in for the exercise.
Obviously, if the power to draw up deadlines or issue threats of sanctions (as against creating the right environment for its adoption) is all that is required to get the job done, the exercise would have long been concluded.
Rather than seek to enforce impossible deadlines, therefore, the CBN, as indeed the Bankers Committee, would do well to focus on creating the right atmosphere to get more customers to sign up for the programme.
On the second issue, we also think the CBN could have done better to develop a simpler, less cumbersome and less time-consuming process, or better still, a single platform to integrate the banks. A single platform would obviously save time and eliminate the additional burden imposed on multiple account owners.
That should neither prove an impossible task given the current level of application of Information Technology in the sector, nor be considered too late given the foregoing circumstances.
Finally, we see the idea of stopping the operations of accounts in the event of the failure to meet the registration deadline as stemming from the failure of imagination. Would the apex bank rather shut the offenders out as against finding creative means to sign them on to the BVN? Would that mean that only those signed on would enjoy banking services?
The answers to these questions would have a great impact on the economy, since banking is at the core of every economic activity. That is why the CBN must come out with a flexible BVN aimed at maximum compliance without a penalty regime that shrinks the banking market.
