The President of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, Prof. Segun Ajibola, has urge members of the institute to promote and defend the best of standards, bench marking, which are international best practices.
He said, “as an institute saddled with the responsibility of promoting ethics and professionalism in the banking industry, we would not relent in our efforts to uphold our dignity in the profession.”
Ajibola said the efforts at attracting the needed Foreign Direct Investment to grow the economy may not yield the expected results unless government and relevant agencies enhance the ease of doing business in Nigeria.
According to him, aside safety of investment and huge returns, an average investor will operate in an environment where there are little or no hitches to maximise cost, adding that the CIBN also tasked government on the establishment of a proper mechanism for monitoring and evaluating projects execution to achieve the desired growth.
“Government at all levels must create healthy business environment to facilitate industrial growth and promote investment inflows.
“Government must take the lead, Government must play its statutory role, provide enabling environment for law and order. The environment must be conducive for local and foreign investors,” he added.
The CIBN boss pointed out that Nigeria is in competition with the neighbouring countries in terms of attracting investment, stating that government must create incentives to drive industrialisation policy, stressing the need for government to ensure that projects are implemented as planned in terms of scope, schedule and cost.
“Let there be incentives and let the incentives get to those that matters. When we introduce subsidy and they do not get to those that need it, it is as good as they are not introduced. We do so much of talking and less of actions and implementation and that’s why the wonderful ideas we generated over the years did not have the desired impact because of poor implementation and poor follow up. Let the people feel the impact of these policies and let it impact on the overall performance.” Ajibola said.
On the institute’s mandate for 2017, he disclosed that CIBN would continue to build capacity for the banking industry, work on certification of various members of the institutes to prepare them as professionals in various areas of specialisation, as well as engage the various stakeholders on how to promote the interest of the people and the economy.
