CBN, EFCC, ICPC commence joint Operation on Banks in Bauchi.
CBN, EFCC and ICPC Taskforce Team leader in Bauchi Dr Elizabeth Kwaghe speaking to Journalists. Photo credit: Abubakar Baba Ahmad
By Abubakar Baba Ahmad.
A Taskforce Team comprising of Central Bank of Nigeria CBN officials, EFCC and ICPC in Bauchi has commenced sting operation to ascertain the commercial banks’ distribution of allocated funds from the apex Bank on ATMs and POS operators.
The team had earlier visited Access and Fitst banks to ensure the directive on disbursement of the new currencies were strictly adhered to by the officials concerned.
Speaking to Radio Nigeria, the Leader of the Team and Deputy Director department of Currency Relations of the CBN Dr Elizabeth Kwaghe said the exercise was aimed at ensuring monies given to commercial banks to load in ATMs and distribute to POS operators and Swap agents are adequately utilised.
Dr Elizabeth Kwaghe said eighty to ninety percent of funds allocated to the banks were traced to their vaults, an act that contravened its directive of distributing certain amounts to POS and Swap agents for easy exchange by people.
“What we do is to look at the allocation given to the banks, they will trace it to their books, how much was loaded in their ATM machines and how much they gave to their agents. Looking at the ATM machines, we look at the record of how much each of the ATM carries,then we look at the total amount withdrawn by the individuals we look at the spreadsheet in their system to see if what was loaded is actually withdrawn by the customers,” Dr Elizabeth explains.
She urged the various registered POS and Swap agents to go to their respective banks and collect the allocated money to enable people swap their old naira notes.
The Taskforce Team Leader who frowned at the deliberate refusal by some commercial banks to load money in their ATMs, warned that failure to obey the directive would attract severe sanction.
“Like in some of the banks we have seen over 80 to 90% of what was disburse to them still in their vaults. We query them for not giving to their agents. Most of the ATMs are down, so until we go in and talk to them before they will come out and activate it, they come up with one issues or the other, which we do not totally agree with. So we instruct them to make sure that all their ATM machines are full to capacity and then make sure that at any time there is any issue, they address it immediately,” She notes.
One of the banks visited disclosed that it had collected its weekly allocation of two hundred million naira last week friday from the apex bank for distribution to its smaller branches and registered Swap and POS agents.
Banks visited by the Taskforce Team include UBA, Access, First Bank as well as all their on site and off-site ATMs.
