Commercial banks in Nigeria closed 2.021 million bank accounts in the first quarter of 2024, Q1’24, to clean their books of suspicious accounts, following the regulatory orders on the linkage of bank accounts to the National Identity Number, NIN.
This is revealed in a report by the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, according vanguard.
According to the report, the number of inactive bank accounts grew month-on-month, by four million or 2.0 per cent to 19.7 million in March 2024 compared to 19.3 million in the February.
A bank account is referred to be inactive when it records zero transactions including deposits, withdrawals, transfers or point-of-sale transactions for six months.
On the other hand, records of the “Industry Bank Account Database”, a monthly data reported by banks, and compiled by NIBSS, also reveal that the number of active bank accounts was up by 6.62 million or 3.0 per cent to 219.64 million when compared to 213.02 million in February.
Recall that in December 2023, the CBN in a circular issued a directive to all commercial banks in the country to restrict tier-1 accounts without proper Biometric CBN
CBN in the circular stated that the process for account opening shall commence by electronically retrieving BN or NIN related information from NIBSS’s BVN or NIMC’s NIN databases and for same to become the primary information for onboarding of new customers
In addition, all existing customer accounts/wallets for individuals with validated BVN shall be prfiled in the NIBSS’ ICAD immediately and within 24hrs of opening accounts/wallets.
The number of Nigerians with valid BVN stood at 61.6 million as of April 2024, according to NIBSS data
