Kunle Aderinokun
6 November 2009
Abuja — Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, yesterday said the bank will not relent in its efforts to ensure that public confidence is restored and sustained in the country's banking sector.
Declaring a two-day National Conference on Electronic Payment open yesterday in Abuja, Sanusi said as part of its efforts, the apex bank, will continue to make appropriate disclosures, strengthen its policy of zero tolerance on all unprofessional and unethical conducts from anybody or any company, no matter how powerful.
"I wish to re-emphasize the commitment of the CBN to continually take actions necessary to restore and sustain publicconfidence in the Nigerian banking system and by extension, the Nigerian Payments System through appropriate disclosures, and strengthening of its policy of zero to lerance on all unprofessional and unethical conducts from any quarter, however powerful," he said.
Sanusi said in this regard, measures have been put in placeto strengthen CBN's policy and oversight processes in relevant areas and emphasized that the recent intervention of the CBN was in response to the obvious general weakness in risk management and corporate governance coupled with huge concentration in exposure of the Deposit Money Banks in some sectors, that is capital market, and oil and gas sectors.
The measures, according to him, were "aimed at engendering discipline in corporate governance, prevent systemic distress and ensure financial system stability in which an efficient payment system will thrive on a sustainable basis."
He said "lessons learnt in these areas must be brought tobear on the operations of payments system in order to avoid making the same mistakes, as the gravity of its negative impact may even be assume greater proportion that we have experienced so far."
Sanusi lamented that over the years, the Nigerian Payment System has been bedeviled by a number of problems, which the envisaged National Payments System Policy framework is expected to address moving forward.
He listed such problems to include, "dominance of cash and paper-based activities in the economy; manual operations and delays in clearing time of cheques; infrastructural bottlenecks; sharp practices and insiders abuse; shortage of technical personnel and low confidence in the Banker's clearing system."
He reminded the participants that effort at developinga Payments System for Nigeria was not new, as the banking watchdog in recent times had introduced a number of initiatives to enhance the settlement system in the nation's financial market.
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