A colleague, among others, asked me earlier today a very important question about this whole Bank Verification Number BVN, program of the central bank. He wondered what would happen to his uncle’s bank account, since he would not be able to do his verification at any of the branch of Skye Bank. His uncle happens to have traveled to the Phillipines to further his study as an optometrist.
The Bank Verification Number program is a policy of Central Bank of Nigeria that is aimed at reducing fraud in the banking industry. It requires that all bank account owners to be physically present to complete the verification process, after which a unique BVN number would be issued to the account owner. It would be his identity for future transaction with any bank in the country.
But with millions of Nigerian living abroad, it would be totally unfair to block all their accounts without providing a channel from where they would have an equal opportunity to be verified as well. I know quite a few doctors who have been lamenting about the downside of this program, especially as they believed they would be cut off from access to their accounts.
But the CBN have approved about 10 centres for Nigeria Diaspora BVN registration. This was as tweeted by Skye Bank.
Apart from the part that i find these approved centers insufficient, it is a good start and hopefully the CBN would approve more centers to verify as many Nigerian citizens as possible, before its October 31st 2015 DEADLINE!!!
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