Otunba (Mrs) \u2018Debola Osibogun an astute banker is erstwhile President, Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) and Founder, Consumer Awareness Financial and Enlightenment Initiative (CAFEI), an advocacy group encouraging financial literacy amongst the younger generation and women. In this interview with Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf she speaks on the fallout of the just concluded Global Money Week, saving culture vis-\u00e0-vis its benefits to the economy, amongst other sundry issues. Excerpts:<\/p>\n
What is your view about the Global Money Week? Do you think Nigerians are taking full advantage of the opportunity presented by the initiative?<\/p>\n
Before I answer your question, let me give a little background on the justification for the Global Money Week (GMW), especially my involvement as an individual. My pet project, which is Consumer Awareness and Financial Enlightenment Initiative, was set up in 2015. After spending over thirty-something years in the banking industry, I was looking for a way to give back to the industry so that\u2019s how I started up with the NGO. Global Money Week itself is an initiative of Child and Youth Finance International. It\u2019s an annual financial awareness campaign built to inspire children and youths to learn about money matters, their livelihood and entrepreneurship; mainly for children.<\/p>\n
When we say children, we mean those that are of a very younger age, between those in primary and those in secondary school. In Nigeria, we say that by the time you\u2019re 21, you\u2019re an adult. But abroad, 18 is the border to cross into adulthood so we can relatively say 18 is the age limit since they are out of secondary school by then anyway. So the Global Money Week is to create awareness around savings habit and child financial right. We\u2019re supposed to teach children and the youths about the importance of financial literacy. My NGO has a bit of financial enlightenment and we have made it one of our cardinal programmes to work within that week to try and help children in schools to cultivate the habit of savings. We know that once you\u2019re able to catch them young and know the importance of savings, it will make them better adults. When I was young, my father who was a permanent secretary and my mother who was senior matron then, whenever we were given money, there was an account in which we save and were not allowed to spend it. So when we were in secondary school, they used to give us pocket money of 2 pounds. Then, 2 pounds was a lot of money (in 1969). They used to as well give us food stuff so the money was just to attend to urgent matters really (like a fallback mechanism). Anytime we went back home on holidays, whatever we had left, was put in the savings account by my father. By the time I was 21, my father had died and I still had a lot of money accumulated from gifts from uncles, aunts and others and we also did some odd jobs for aunts and others for money so by the time I was an adult, I had a whole lot of money and that\u2019s exactly what we are going back to now; teach the children to save from the beginning.<\/p>\n
Do you think most Nigerians are aware of the existence of the Global Money Week?<\/p>\n
The GMW has been on since 2012 or 2013 and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has been the one driving it by mandating banks to teach in selected secondary schools across the six geopolitical zones and you\u2019ll find out that banks are expected to continually promote financial literacy among the younger generation since they believe that the future of our country lies in these young minds.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the GMW is a global movement to raise awareness of the importance of financial education and financial inclusion for children and youths. This is to build a financially standing generation for future leaders and our children are the future leaders of tomorrow. If they do not know how to handle their finances, then we are creating problems for the future. The children must be knowledgeable, equipped, to be able to take critical decisions to improving their lives and venture into right business activities in the future. If they don\u2019t even know how to handle money as youths, what would be expected of them when they grow up? Secondly, there is nothing that happens in the whole world that is not directly related with finance. Even if you\u2019re going to come up with things that will impact lives of the populace, finance has to be the backbone and what CAFEI has done in the last two years; we\u2019ve been to CBN (they have a unit called Consumer Protection) and we discussed with them if it is possible to see financial literacy as a stand-alone subject. We were directed to the Nigerian Education Research Development Council and we also told them about the initiative and what they came up to tell us was that the students in secondary schools have a lot of subjects on their hands already and what they had tried to do was incorporate it in some of their social sciences subjects, economics, accounting etc. So basically, if our foundation is faulty, then we\u2019ll have a problem with the future generation of this country. We were told from the very beginning and that\u2019s what has made Nigerian what it is today.<\/p>\n
How do you think youths of this age and time can adopt the savings culture?<\/p>\n
You know, in the olden days, even before my generation, our great grandparents used to keep their money under pillows, water pots to keep them safe. At that time, there was a lot of trust in the society. There were also the alajos (the people who take daily contributions). As at then, we could trust each other. What we are trying to teach now is banks should come up with products that would encourage children to save, that will incorporate the discipline of savings in children and I believe all banks have products for children. They need to create awareness around these products. Polaris has Rainbow; First Bank has future First Programme, etc. But parents must also teach their children the habit of savings. There is an adage in Yoruba which says \u2018do not eat with your 10 fingers.\u2019 Even in the Bible, you\u2019d recall that Joseph interpreted Pharaoh\u2019s dream, saying there\u2019d be years of plenty and years of famine. Things can\u2019t go on the same way every time and every one that doesn\u2019t have savings would have missed it from the very beginning. Look at when pensioners were not paid at a point in the country, if they didn\u2019t have savings, most of them would have died. But most of them with savings fell back on their savings during the period of famine, which is what we are trying to inculcate into the children. If you\u2019re not careful, your children begin to think that their parents will always be there but I lost my own dad when I was just 17. I wasn\u2019t even in the university yet. How did I survive? It was all thanks to my savings!<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the link between the surge of unemployment in Nigeria and the poor culture of savings among the younger generations?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very difficult to link. But what I can say is that if the children have been savings from when they were young, by the time they are old enough and done with education and can\u2019t lay hands on a job almost immediately, their savings would have helped. They could have used it to start up any form of business. Even children that were well brought up and had so much, it got to a stage that most of them decided that they won\u2019t get salary jobs. Like I said, my savings helped me while I was in school as well because I could go abroad, buy stuffs, come back, sell, wear what I wanted etc. my mother was just there to pay school fees. But you know students have a way of living like the whole world is in their hands and of course, as soon as I got into the university, it was natural for me to go buy jewelries, clothes and all sorts of things I could sell. If children cultivate the habit of savings, the rate of unemployment would not have been this bad. Even if it were just to buy things to start off a business, that would have helped somehow but most people didn\u2019t\u2019 have that and it has increased the rate of unemployment. The only way to undo that is to go back to the young ones between 6 and 18 and inculcate in them, the habit of savings.<\/p>\n
Your organisation comes across as an advocacy group addressing the rights of consumers. How have you been working with relevant government agencies to ensure that standards are maintained?<\/p>\n
I think I mentioned that before, that is an area we really intend to focus on and I mentioned that we\u2019ll be working with Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and other non-profits that deal with this cause. I heard what comes into Nigeria comes in three different grades: the Standard, Substandard and Below Standard. Why do we have three different grades? I understand that when people go abroad, they request to reduce the originality of products that are coming into the country. For example, I heard that in China that they\u2019d actually ask you what kind of standard you want. Anything below the original standards does not go into the developed countries and that takes us to our borders. The Customs must be truthful to the cause of this nation. It\u2019s obvious that they are working and we\u2019ve seen them destroy things that are of low standards. Our borders cannot afford to be porous at this present time.<\/p>\n
What is your five year projection for CAFEI in the next five years?<\/p>\n
Firstly, we will formally launch out on July 11th in Lagos. If I have to let you into it, we want to start a mass education and get a faculty in place to educate the strata of the society; the children, literate, semi-literate, etc. We also want to work with all the other NGOs that already exist so that we form a formidable force to tackle the issue of consumer protection in this country. We want to collectively work with NAFDAC and SON to get things standardised in this country. We also look forward, very importantly to giving an award to the best financial institution during the GMW that actually deals with the objective of the GMW. Based on the activities we\u2019ve been involved in since inception; we\u2019ve done quite a bit of programs which included lecturing about 2,000 women in conjunction with Women Ministry in Ibadan. We were able to teach them on financial literacy. The not-so-literate should also be a major concern because getting things like aso-ebi in order to fit in doesn\u2019t really make much sense as much as savings is concerned. Some still keep money under their pillows when the banks have been there for decades and even offer promos for bringing their income into the financial institutions. We try to discourage this because the government is unable to determine just how much money is in circulation and cannot effectively plan for development. Also, security is not guaranteed at home. If your money is in the bank, especially now that the world is going cashless, the issues of burglary, assassination and other atrocities committed in order to rid you of your money would come to a drastic decrease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Otunba (Mrs) \u2018Debola Osibogun an astute banker is erstwhile President, Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) and Founder, Consumer Awareness Financial and Enlightenment Initiative (CAFEI), an advocacy group encouraging financial literacy amongst the younger generation and women. In this interview with Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf she speaks on the fallout of the just concluded Global […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":3952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15],"tags":[139,106,314,344],"class_list":["post-10349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","tag-culture","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-money"],"yoast_head":"\n