The Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents of Nigeria (AMMBAN) has decried the recent directive of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) mandating all Point Of Sale (POS) agents to formally register their businesses for the purposes of capturing them in database of all enterprises in the country.
In a speech by the National General-Secretary of the association at a media briefing at the weekend in Lagos, Oluwasegun Elegbede on behalf of the President of the association, Fasasi Sarafsdeen Atanda, the group pointed out that the latest commission’s directive was unnecessary, contradictory to existing laws, and amounted to a mere revenue generation move to further tax hapless Nigerians.
It maintained that the reason that the directive was designed to curb crime in the financial space was untenable and expressed its disagreement with CAC’s claim that it wanted to fight crimes in the banking business space through registration
According to the AMMBAN national leader, the association believes that the kind of crimes in the space are both human and technical, which CAC registration cannot fight.
Atanda cited the provisions on Section 18 (1) of CAMA which states that “A person may apply to the commission for the registration of a company” and section 22(1) states that “A company shall be deemed to be a separate legal entity from its members” to justify the association’s opposition to the registration of POS operators by the commission.
The group insisted that what this meant is that individuals and non-individuals (companies) have different legal statuses and requirements while the CBN Policy on financial inclusion and development states that “agency banking services shall be provided by agents who are individuals or non-individuals (companies) registered with the CBN (Section 2.1).
It stressed that the policy clearly recognized the distinction between individuals and non-individuals and does not require individuals to register with CAC,” the paper read.
Atanda hinted that AMMBAN had made and still making spirited efforts in combating the issue of crimes within their business space, and condemned the insistence of CAC to deploy the police to execute the directive against those who fail to register their business by July 7.
The group debunked the allegation credited to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that AMMBAN members were colluding with bank staff to hoard cash or engage in buying and selling of cash, adding that the allegation is misleading, and also damaging to the reputation of its members who are law-abiding citizens.
AMMBAN also denied allegation that its members were responsible for scarcity of cash, adding that her members are also facing similar challenge because their agents are not given any preferences in accessing cash from the bank, noting that “it has been a long standing demand that the CBN categorize agencies into different tiers to enable them to have access to cash, rather than seeing them as individuals with a limit of N500000. This will help to address the current cash scarcity and promote financial inclusion.”
Similarly, it rejected the CBN ‘s policy limiting multiple accounts/wallets to two, adding that the policy has crashed the agent network category and is an attack on financial inclusion.
Atanda further clarified: “We urge everyone to work together to promote financial inclusion and economic growth, rather than engaging in activities that can undermine the progress made so far.”
“People are asking us why are we taking this step, we are taking this step to save millions of jobs in Nigeria, because it is not just about POS, it is actually beyond POS.
“We know the implications of most of these policies that are not well thought out and their impacts on the economy generally. As of today since the beginning of the cashless policy and the cash redesign policies last year, to the level of NIN and BVN linkage and then the recent policies of asking all agents to go and register with CAC, and lots of policies being dished out to providers internally via internal memo, such as restriction on how many accounts an agent can have, all these policies have led to the following statistics: We have lost over 1.5 million jobs in the last one year”, he added.
According to him, there are over 3.7 million POS in circulation as of today, but the service providers were only able to deploy 2.7, leaving the gap of 1million POS amounting to a loss of 1 million jobs in Nigeria.
The AMMBAN leader also maintained agents that are utilizing Fintech solutions such as mobile apps, websites and other digital and Fintech channels are creating hundreds of jobs in the form of app developers, UI, US Engineers and all others in that space, lamenting that the CAC’s directive has coast the group cumulatively 200,000 jobs.
