- Instead of opening 2,000 MFB outlets, NIPOST should focus on its core mandate
Banking is one of the trickiest businesses ever, and banking in Nigeria is peculiarly so. It is akin to a mirage, the more you look, the less you see. Then again, microfinance banking has remained a running debacle in these climes; so is penny banking or rural banking if you like. In other words, banking in all its ramifications here is a tough proposition.
This is why we are alarmed that the Postmaster-General of the Federation, Mr. Adebisi Adegbuyi, is much elated at the prospect of veering his job down the slippery boulevard of rural micro-finance banking. And he seems to go headlong into it with much enthusiasm.
Adegbuyi told journalists at a seminar that NIPOST was set to roll out 2,000 outlets of microfinance banks across the country. About 106 outlets have already been selected for take-off of what is described as NIRSAL Micro Finance Banks (NMFB). NIRSAL is acronym for Nigeria Incentive-based Risk-sharing System for Agriculture Lending which means that the new post office bank would serve as one of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) outlets for the disbursal of agriculture loans to rural farmers, among others.
It is supposedly part of the financial inclusion strategies in the unbanked communities. Adegbuyi explains thus: “The investments made by the government in postal outlets all over the federation in time past would now be put to use to reach the unbanked.
“A lot of Nigerians are unbanked and these unbanked people are mostly in the rural communities and these postal outlets will be leveraged upon to promote financial inclusion in the unbanked communities.”
NIPOST built post offices in nearly every corner of the country, most of which are currently in derelict state. It is these offices that are about to be refurbished for the purpose of micro-finance banking.
The initiative is in collaboration with the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee; NIPOST has been granted a super-agent licence because of the spread of the infrastructure at its disposal. NIPOST would therefore serve as an agent bank to all the commercial banks in the country.
CBN’s quest is for many more Nigerians to be in the banking system. CBN’s position: “Our shared agent network which aims at mobilising 500,000 agents across the country, our payment system, the mobile banking, the mobile money, the MFB all of them come together to ensure that jobs are created and poverty is alleviated and more and more people are moved from the informal sector through financial inclusion.”
The Bankers’ Committee, which is a body of the managing directors of commercial banks has waded into the project thus: “The partnership coming from the banks is to facilitate the movement of credit. The assurance that we have this time, that this financing will reach to the grassroots is the fact that the CBN has been saddled with the responsibility to open branches; aggressive branch opening, so that this fund can be accessible through the MFB that has been created by the Bankers’ Committee.”
From the forgoing, this collaboration between the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee on the one hand, and NIPOST on the other, is no doubt noble: to create more credit outlet to the rural dwellers. In other words, it is not a commercial proposition; rather it is another massive government bureaucracy being set up.
A few questions linger:
One, rural banking is largely social service. Is government ready to go the long haul? Second, the problem plaguing the extension of credit to the rural poor had always been corruption and not lack of access. Would the new MFBs be more accountable? Who will manage the banks?
All said, we think NIPOST is veering from its core business of courier, cargo deliveries and logistics services. Over 2,000 post offices spread across the country which have been comatose ought to have been deployed to the very lucrative delivery and logistics business. Apart from the big fishes in the sector, numerous local transport companies are making hay with parcel and cargo haulage services.
NIPOST ought to be leading in this line of business instead of dabbling into banking.
