Nigerians set to boycott banks on Tuesday, March 1st

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(Nigeria) Nigerian banking customers, under the aegis of Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria, CAFON, will on Tuesday, March 1, 2016 boycott banks in the country in protest against arbitrary and excessive bank charges.
CAFON had launched a campaign against the introduction of Stamp Duty charge of N50, Current Account Maintenance Fee and excessive bank charges.
The group called on bank customers to boycott all banking services on March in protest of these charges.
But the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN faulted the boycott, saying CAFON should rather encourage Nigerians to take complaints that are related to wrongful bank charges to the appropriate quarters.
CBN in a statement on Monday, said “The Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria, a non-profit making organisation has been threatening to boycott banking services on Tuesday, March 1, 2016, owing to perceived arbitrary charges by commercial bank.
“It is pertinent to note that the Nigerian banking system had seen radical reforms in recent years in order to drive the Vision 20: 2020 programme. As part of this broad policy initiative the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) rolled out the Cashless policy with a numbers of options in the electronic payment systems, including the mobile banking.
“To achieve this, the CBN had enlisted electronic and telecom service providers to ensure convenience and safety. In addition, the Bank also set up the Consumer Protection Debarment (CPD) saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that bank customers are not unduly  short-change by the commercial banks.      
“Meanwhile, it is equally expected that while the regulators are doing their own bit, bank customers must not only insist, but persist in demanding that their respective banks give them good service and at affordable charges. Nigerians should note that the bank-customer relationship is personal and contractual and should seek for redress when shotchanged.
“Consequently, in order to ensure a mutual and beneficial bank-customer relationship, the CBN had issued guidelines on bank charges. The guidelines were widely circulated in order to ensure standards as well as help bank customers make informed decisions regarding any perceived unjust charges.
“It therefore remains the obligation of the bank customers to ensure that they are not short-changed amount no matter how small. In the event customers failed to stop their banks from cheating them, the CBN had again went further to provide contact centre with telephone lines, email address to enable  customers lodge their  complaints with its Consumer Protection Department, CPD.
“Recently, the CBN made public the successful investigation of 6000 complaints it received of some unauthorized deductions that amounted to over N6.2 billion. The CBN had already compelled commercial banks to return these illegal deductions to customers.”  

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