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From Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
The Rural Trust Fund for Economic Inclusion has flagged-off an advocacy campaign on financial inclusion as well as Bank Verification Number (BVN) enrollment in Gombe State.
According to the group, the sensitisation is part of its advocacy campaign on financial inclusion in the North-East which is said to be below the 37 per cent national average of regions with unbanked population in the country.
Addressing newsmen at the flagging-off on Monday in Gombe, the Chairman of the trust fund, Mr Joel Aku, stated that the project is expected to reach out to an estimated 167,000 in Gombe State out of the one million unbanked adult population in the North-East.
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He explained that according to a report that was recently released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Gombe was one of the states of the federation that has a large unbanked population. ‘And you know financial inclusion cannot be achieved if the people don’t bank accounts and a verifiable BVN,’ he said.
He added that the advocacy of financial inclusion and the mass BVN enrollment in the North-East was an initiative of the rural trust fund and that it was derived from the intervention of the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other financial institutions with the support of CBN.
Mr Joel further explained that the benefit of joining the banking family and the enrollment into the BVN ecosystem include “enable people to open safe and affordable bank accounts to have the ability to save money and create future wealth while it could also give them access to government social grant payment directly into the beneficiaries’ linked BVN accounts.
‘It also helps in ensuring consumer protection during the economic crisis and it will enable people to adopt new savings culture and build wealth. It is now a well-founded fact that giving low-income households access to financial services can make a critical contribution to reducing poverty and addressing inequality,’ Mr Joel stated.
