There is an innovation in town called the Bank Verification Number.

A good and positive step indeed. In the face of the terror and mayhem  visited on innocent and peace loving people, the source of fund to the merchants of death ought to be checkmated. It needs to be stopped. This is one major step to weaken the strength of the terrorists.

Arguably, our local terror squad, Boko Haram source funds from both local and foreign sympathisers.

Over time, Boko Haram has demonstrated that fund isn’t its major setback. This obvious, judging from its confidence and self- sufficient poise.

Other forms of anti progress elements that need to be checked are the fraudsters, drug dealers, money launderers, human traffickers and corrupt government officials.

This informed the financial authorities’ drive to harmonise bank accounts of Nigerians across various financial institutions, to keep tabs on the movement of money within and outside the country.

The response from Nigerians is overwhelming. As the date of termination of registration approaches, our correspondent went round the Abuja Federal Capital Territory, to sample the opinions of bankers and customers on whether the deadline of June 30th would be feasible.

At Nyanya, a suburb of the city, long queues were seen in front of all the banks as early as 6 am.

A visit to one of the old generation banks revealed that customers have always waited for hours on end without achieving the goal for which thy come on daily basis.

The same situation is witnessed in Kubwa, Bwari, Lugbe, Kuruduma and other outskirt towns.

One customer of the bank who spoke on condition of anonymity to Western post declared, “I will not come here again, if they like they should close the account.

“Look I have been coming here since last week and it is either network or crowd or no one to attend to us.

“I am a businessman, imagine the time I waste here everyday. And they said it would close on the 30th of June.”

In Garki, the situation is a bit appreciable. The same in Wuse, Maitama and Asokoro.

Customers close to Wuse market, complain crowd as most traders within the market axis besiege the few available banks for their BVN.

Generally, customers agree that it has been a smooth exercise in the city center, although a customer of one of the banks, Mr Arome Daniel Adejo said he was told to expect his BVN 24 hours later via SMS but after three days of waiting he had to pay another transportation fare from his house in Mararaba, Nasarawa State to Garki just to get his number.

A banker, Mr Oyedele Michael said it was a smooth exercise but admitted it won’t be easy to verify all the customers before the set date.

He gave some of the challenges as service hitches, crowd of customers and the fact that some customers in remote settlements visit banks once in a while.

These would also need to be included in the verification exercise.

“Unless we want to leave a vast proportion of our customers out or make them lose their deposits”, he concluded.

Story Witten by Alex Agbo

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