Yemisi Izuora
The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has said that the organisation is working very hard to create a greater public awareness on financial inclusion in order to eradicate financial exclusion and ensure a greater participation by all. To achieve this, NDIC held a sensitization lecture today for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members at their orientation camp in Ipaja, Lagos.
The corporation said that the campaign became necessary to abridge knowledge gap as well as ensure financially sound Nigerians, thus reducing the quantum of the financially excluded which stood at 39.5 per cent as at November, 2014.
According to the Director, Special Insured Institutions Department, NDIC, Mr Etopidiok James
“NDIC is very much interested in empowering Nigerians in the area of financial inclusion. And one way we can do that effectively is by creating public awareness, and we want to do that with as many strata as possible especially those in the youth age that is the corpers. So as to make sure that they are financially informed and sound in order to reduce the quantum of the financial excluded which was put at 39.5 per cent as at November, 2014”.
Etopidiok while presenting a paper titled, Deposit Insurance System in Nigeria, lamented that 40 million Nigerians which formed 65 per cent of the total of the nations population were still unbanked. This and inability of the people to understand the benefits to be derived from the protective role of NDIC, James highlighted as some of the major challenges facing the corporation.
He further stressed that the corporation is working towards ensuring that financial inclusion is added to education curriculum of higher institutions in the country. He equally added that as a result, the corporation is taking awareness education to the villages in the rural areas,
schools, market places as well as through the media.
He urged corp members to ensure that they are financially informed and also to form the habit of saving their money or investing it wisely assuring them that their deposits and banks were protected by NDIC.