Aminu Tambuwal house Speaker
The House of Representatives has accepted the arguments advanced by the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, in favour of the apex bank’s policies on Islamic component of non-interest banking and the limitation of daily cash withdrawals.
The lower chamber of the National Assembly gave its nod to the controversial policies after it received a comprehensive briefing on them at Thursday’s plenary.
But, significantly, members were not allowed to ask any questions after his presentation.
There has been a lot of public outcry over the policies and the House had invited Sanusi to clarify the basis for introducing the non-interest banking and limiting the amount of cash a customer could withdraw from his bank account in a day.
Deputy Speaker of the House, Hon Emeka Ihedioha, who presided over the session, ruled that the clarifications offered by the apex bank were satisfactory and members had become more enlightened on the policies.
Ihedioha said that in view of the volume of explanations already made and the fact that the House would not have sat yesterday because of the death of the Chairman, National Assembly Service Commission, Alhaji Ahmed Aliyu Dogondaji, the interaction should not be reduced to a question and answer session.
The House had earlier observed a minute silence in honour of Dogondaji who died in the early hours of Thursday.
However, a cross section of lawmakers, who spoke to newsmen outside the chambers, disagreed with this position, arguing that the presentation made by Sanusi still left many questions unanswered and they were not given the opportunity to seek further clarifications.
Sanusi, who briefed the House for about one hour, said the introduction of the non-interest banking was to provide bank customers, particularly small scale businessmen, with an alternative banking platform that would allow them to borrow money to finance their enterprises without running into the huge debt burden usually associated with the conventional banking system.
The cash withdrawal limit policy, Sanusi said, was intended to reduce cost of service, increase access and convenience as well as advance Nigeria into the club of countries that run cashless economies. Both policies, he said, were in the overall interest of the Nigerian economy.
Apart from these policies being in line with global trends, Sanusi explained, they were in the interest of the poor masses in the country that had been bearing the huge cost of banking services even though their share of the cash flow in the economy had remained very low.
He said under the policy on cash transaction, there is actually no embargo on the amount of money a bank customer could withdraw except that withdrawal beyond the stipulated limit would attract a cost to the customer.
“For the avoidance of doubt, no limit exists on cash transaction, but the very few high volume cash users should bear commensurate service cost while most of Nigerians are exempted from subsidising them. The 90 per cent of Nigerians who are poor people are subsidising 10 per cent who impose the huge cost of cash on the system.
“The industry proposal is not to place limit on cash transactions, but to provide that the 10 per cent of customers who make high volume cash transactions will bear the associated cost and eliminate the subsidy by the mass public (90 per cent) of banking customers.
This will have direct impact on banking industry efficiency and cost structure – reducing the cost of cash to the financial system will result in significant savings that can be passed on to customers in form of reduced cost of banking services and lower lending rates to borrowers,” he said.
On Islamic banking, Sanusi lamented that he had been grossly misunderstood on the policy by persons who launched a media war against him without taking the pains to read the details of the policy.
He said that contrary to the perception in some quarters, Islamic banking is simply a non-interest bank which transacts banking business, trading, investments and commercial activities without charging interest on loans.
The bank, he also said, does not support alcohol, pornography, gambling, speculations and other ventures that are not in accordance with Islamic commercial jurisprudence.
According to him, the idea of non-interest banking was conceived long before he was appointed governor of CBN. The policy, he said, had been embraced by many countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and America and does not discriminate against any religion.
“The greatest danger to any government policy in this country is the tendency for people to view it from some primordial angles. This tendency to view every single national matter as either ethnic or religious will not get us anywhere. We had an election in which the issue of concern was not education, health or electricity but whether the president comes from the North or South and whether he is a Muslim or Christian.
“Let us remove the product (non-interest banking) from religion because it is already a universal banking product, even though it might have had religious roots. The CBN is not setting up or promoting Islamic banking, non-interest banking is already operational in more than 70 countries of the world and it is not discriminatory,” Sanusi said.
Meanwhile, the Minority Leader of the House, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila (ACN/Lagos), has expressed reservations about the manner in which the explanations were taken without questions.
Gbajabiamila said it was an error of judgement to allow the CBN governor to appear before the House in plenary without the members having the opportunity to interact with him and seek further clarifications.
He said the encounter was more or less a monologue and not even a lecture because in a typical classroom situation lecturers are obliged to take questions from students.
The session, Gbajabiamila said, would have been more enriching if the lawmakers had been allowed to seek more explanations on some of the grey areas of the two policies under review.
Another lawmaker, Hon. Daramola (ACN/Ekiti), faulted the decision by the leadership of the House not to allow members ask questions after the briefing.
However, Hon. Umar Adam Katsayal (CPC, Katsina State) said members of the parliament needed to engage their constituents in some enlightenment programmes to facilitate the acceptability of the policies.
Former Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Hon. Uche Ekwunife (APGA/Anambra), said that since many Nigerians were ignorant of the rudiments of the policies, there was an urgent need for the CBN to educate the populace on the dynamics of contemporary banking especially as it affects the non-interest banking.
Also reacting to the briefing, Hon. Robinson Uwak (PDP, Akwa Ibom) explained that a lot of Nigerians were yet to understand the policies.
He urged the apex bank to take measures to help win the confidence of the generality of Nigerians towards the reforms in the banking sector.
Uwak, however, berated the CBN governor, whom he said attempted to ridicule critics of his policies, especially some of the clerics who picked holes in the new policies, rather than addressing the core issues.
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