Commercial banks in Nigeria closed 2.021 million bank accounts in the first quarter of 2024.
This is contained in a report by the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, NIBSS, which also indicated that the number of inactive bank accounts grew month-on-month, MoM, by four million or 2.0 per cent to 19.7 million in March 2024 from 19.3 million in the previous month, February.
According to the report, the actions were taken to clean their books of questionable accounts and comply with regulatory orders on the linkage of bank accounts to the National Identity Number (NIN).
A bank account is classified inactive when it records zero transactions including deposits, withdrawals, transfers or point-of-sale transactions for six months.
However, details of the “Industry Bank Account Database”, a monthly data reported by banks, and compiled by the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, NIBSS, also indicated that the number of active bank accounts grew by 6.62 million or 3.0 per cent to 219.64 million from 213.02 million in February.
Recall that in December 2023, the CBN issued a directive to all commercial banks in the country to restrict tier-1 accounts without proper Biometric Verification Number, BVN, and National Identity Number, NIN, that are not linked by Thursday, March 1st, 2024.
According to NIBSS data on BVN enrollment count, 61.6 million Nigerians have BVN as of April 2024.
In another development, a total of 105 accounts linked to unauthorised foreign currency transactions, money laundering, and financing of terrorism have been frozen by nine fintech businesses.
This comes after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) applied to an Abuja Federal High Court.
On April 24, 2024, the court issued an interim injunction freezing the accounts for ninety days while the investigations were ongoing.
The fintechs impacted include Fairmoney Microfinance Bank (6), VFD (2), Kuda Microfinance Bank Ltd (27), Opay Digital Services (43), Carbon MTB (7), MoMo Payment Service Bank (1), Pagatech (8), PalmPay Ltd (5), and Moniepoint (6).
The EFCC is looking into 1,146 bank accounts that may be used for currency racketeering; these frozen accounts are a part of that probe.
The EFCC believe that some of these accounts’ owners used cryptocurrency platforms to influence the value of the naira relative to the US dollar.
About 300 accounts were earlier frozen because they were linked to illicit peer-to-peer trading, according to information provided by EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede to journalists a few weeks ago.
He clarified that, in the previous year, more than $15 billion was transferred through an unidentified FX platform in violation of financial regulations.
