During the first quarter of 2024, commercial banks in Nigeria closed a total of 2.021 million bank accounts as part of efforts to cleanse their records of suspicious accounts and adhere to regulatory directives regarding the linkage of bank accounts with the National Identity Number (NIN). This information was outlined in a report by the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS).
In December 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued a directive instructing all commercial banks in the country to deactivate tier-1 accounts lacking proper Biometric Verification Numbers (BVN) and National Identity Numbers (NIN) if they were not linked by Thursday, March 1st, 2024.
Additionally, the report revealed that the number of inactive bank accounts experienced a month-on-month increase of four million, or 2.0 percent, rising to 19.7 million in March 2024 from 19.3 million in the previous month of February.
A bank account is classified inactive when it records zero transactions including deposits, withdrawals, transfers or point-of-sale transactions for six months.
However, details of the “Industry Bank Account Database”, a monthly data reported by banks, and compiled by the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, NIBSS, also indicated that the number of active bank accounts grew by 6.62 million or 3.0 per cent to 219.64 million from 213.02 million in February.
According to NIBSS data on BVN enrollment count, 61.6 million Nigerians have BVN as of April 2024.
