The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Thursday, announced that it has recovered over N60 billion from banks as excessive charges imposed on customers.
The CBN Director of Corporate Communications, Mr. Isaac Okoroafor who attended a two-day customer sensitization forum in Owerri said the recovery of the excess bank charges was made possible through the bank’s Consumer Protection Department.
According to him, the amount was recovered following complaints by 13,000 customers over excess and illegal charges on their accounts by banks.
Okoroafor stated that the Apex Bank was determined to ensure that no bank customer was cheated with excessive charges from their banks.
He revealed that the CBN adopted an inter-mediation strategy to monitor the banks and ensure they did not misuse customers’ deposits. The bank also said it has equally returned the same amount to the affected customers.
Speaking on CBN’s development function, Okoroafor said: “We want to stop inflation in the economy by ensuring that prices of food items don’t keep rising at every turn. That’s why we made loans available with single digits interest rates.”
He also stated: “We will also provide high yielding seedlings as well as extension services to the farmers. We’ll equally provide them with the processors or off-takers who will buy off their farm products immediately after harvest. This will create the best value chain for everyone.
“If we face cassava for instance in the South-east alone, we will create at least one million jobs here.
“Our intention is to bring back farm settlements across the country as it used to be in the past. That’s the easiest way of building our economy.”
