We’re ready to help Nigeria achieve financial inclusion, says Netherlands queen

Queen Máxima of the Netherlands says her country is ready to help Nigeria combat challenges in its way of achieving financial inclusion.

Maxima, who is the UN secretary-general’s advocate for financial inclusion for development, said this on Wednesday during her working visit to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

Maintaining that the potentials in achieving financial inclusion are enormous, she said it is possible for Nigeria to be able to address perceived issues that would help its citizens reap the benefits of financial inclusion.

“I was here five years ago to launch the first national strategy on financial inclusion and since 2009, financial inclusion has grown in Nigeria. But in the last years, it has stalled,” she said.

“So, I think this dialogue with the communication institutions and also with the country’s leadership and private sector will take us all of our efforts to be able to achieve financial inclusion in Nigeria.

“It is very important that the mobile network operators are included in this process.

“But above all, what is really important is the corporation between the Central Bank of Nigeria and the NCC to address the real risks and perceived issues to actually make this happen.”

Maxima identified some of the issues in the way of achieving financial inclusion to include consumer protection, infrastructure as well as connectivity.

“A lot of countries have addressed these issues, it is not impossible. We will keep working towards that. We are prepared to help Nigeria to this journey of addressing the risks, identifying them and see the best ways to approach them with the help of regulators,” she added.

Earlier, Umaru Danbatta, executive vice-chairman of NCC, said NCC is committed to the actualisation of the national financial inclusion strategy.

He said the strategy aims to reduce the percentage of financially excluded adult population in Nigeria to 20 percent by 2020.

“Just recently, the final draft of the memorandum of understanding between the CBN and NCC was signed and the CBN/NCC joint technical committee on mobile money is addressing the modalities of mobile network operators registering special purpose vehicles to enable them become mobile money operators,” he said.