Senate panel screens Aishah Ahmad, Edward Adamu for second term as CBN deputy governors

The senate committee on banking has screened Aishah Ahmad and Edward Adamu for a second term as deputy governors of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

President Muhammadu Buhari had renominated the duo on Tuesday, and asked for the confirmation of the upper legislative chamber — the request was referred to the banking committee.

Appearing before the committee on Friday, Ahmad, CBN’s director-general of financial system stability, spoke on the country’s cashless policy.

She gave a historical account of how the cashless policy was first introduced in Lagos in 2012 before it went into force across the country.

“Since then, Nigerians have continued to embrace the cashless policy by using electronic channels for their transactions, whilst the Nigerian payments system and telecommunications infrastructure continued to develop,” she said.

“Agents could perform an increasing variety of transactions including cash in cash out, bill payments and even account opening. Under the CBN’s SANEF initiative, the agent network had grown to 1.4 million agents available in every local government in Nigeria.

“The various options open to Nigerians to perform financial transactions including mobile money, USSD, internet banking, mobile apps, eNaira, agents and mobile POS etc. All of these would ensure that Nigerians would seamlessly adapt to the cashless policy to enable financial inclusion and economic growth.”

Adamu also fielded questions from the senate committee.

Meanwhile, speaking earlier, Uba Sani, chairman of the banking committee, reiterated that the panel was screening the nominees based on the request of Buhari.

“The committee would be engaging the nominees on several issues relating to their background, qualifications, experience and CBN policies, especially the cashless policy and newly introduced cash withdrawal limits,” Sani said.

The committee is expected to submit its recommendations in plenary next week.