In our piece entitled “Rural Churches, BetNaija and Ogogoro Pastors” published on this platform on the 14th of December, 2024, we treated the issue of the many wrongful deeds on the part of some rural pastors of some of our well-known churches and their congregations. We said, in the words of one famous member of our House of Representatives, that many of their pronouncements and actions are ‘’unBiblical, unKoranical, unAfrican, unreasonable, null and void and of no effect whatsoever’’.
Today, in continuation of our series on the life and unprofessional conduct of some professionals operating in our rural areas, we are dwelling on the activities of officials of rural branches of some of our major national and international banks. Their activities can be described as ‘’unbanking’’, unsavory, unethical, unhealthy (in the goal of getting the rural people banked), unacceptable, null and void and of no effect whatsoever.
Do many of you elite living in Abuja, Lagos, Kano and Calabar realize that it sometimes takes more than a month to get a personal or corporate account opened in some bank branches in our rural areas? Many of you may not be aware of it or believe that that is the reality of the fate that befalls some of our ruralites, but it is. No matter how prepared you are with all the documents required, there are one, two or three more things that the officials in charge will still insist you should go back home and come back another day with it or else an account cannot be opened for you. It can really be so so frustrating for our helpless dwellers in the rural areas.
Opening an account and doing other transactions with banks in the rural areas is a very painful odyssey. It is like undergoing the 14 Stations of the Cross which Jesus Christ undertook in fulfillment of his mission on his way to Calvary. Even now that NEPA has stopped functioning for 10 odd years in some parts of CRS where I dwell and I am revealing this awful reality, the mischievous and malicious officials of our rural banks will ask you to produce a NEPA-paid bill as evidence of your residential dwelling place. When by some magic you are able to creatively produce this, they will still send you to your village chief for another requirement. They say if these are not provided, the CBN will query them.
The demand for authentification from a village chief is one of the most difficult of them all because the chief is likely to demand for some money, a jar of palm wine, crates of beer and a typewritten document for him to append his signature on it in order for you to get the banks to give you a reprieve.
Please note also that transport cost has risen astronomically everywhere in the country. And for ruralites, this cost element seems to be the most significant in their encounter with the runaway inflation we are experiencing now. So imagine the sheer transport cost of coming to town and going back to your village hovel in the pursuit of endless demands for one item or the other before an account can be opened for you.
Account holders whose ATM cards have either expired or have been swallowed up in another bank who go for replacements suffer almost the same ordeal in the hands of these almighty rural bank workers. They will ask you for your NIN and many other ‘impossible’ things. If you are lucky to have these things, their excuse will shift to ‘network’. If you are unlucky, you may pursue an ATM card for more than a week due to this network challenge.
Just why is it so difficult for ruralites to carry out banking transactions with ease, you may ask? Well, i have been told that many rural bankers spend the bulk of their official working hours watching pornographic videos on the computers given to them to work with. That is why they have invented a convenient way of driving customers away so they can concentrate on what interests them most on the computer. Since computer screens are positioned facing the bank officials, no one has the privilege of knowing exactly what they are doing which causes them to dismiss customers so nonchalantly. Only the bank workers themselves know what they do. Whether it is banking transactions or pornography, it will never be known. The truth, however, is that billions of manhours are lost every working day in the branches of our non-urban banks due to lack of proper supervision by their bosses in faraway cities.
This loss and the troubles our people who dwell in the rural areas face should be checked.
