In the first quarter of 2024, Nigeria closed 2.021 million bank accounts as part of an effort to clean their books of questionable accounts and comply with regulatory orders requiring the linkage of bank accounts to the National Identity Number (NIN).
This information comes from a report by the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS).
The report also indicates that the number of inactive bank accounts increased by four million, or 2.0 percent month-on-month, reaching 19.7 million in March 2024, up from 19.3 million in February.
A bank account is considered inactive when it records zero transactions, including deposits, withdrawals, transfers, or point-of-sale transactions for six consecutive months.
However, according to details from the “Industry Bank Account Database,” a monthly dataset reported by banks and compiled by NIBSS, the number of active bank accounts grew by 6.62 million, or 3.0 percent, reaching 219.64 million in March, up from 213.02 million in February.
It is worth noting that in December 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued a directive to all commercial banks in the country, instructing them to restrict tier-1 accounts without proper Biometric Verification Number (BVN) and National Identity Number (NIN) linkage by Thursday, March 1st, 2024.
According to NIBSS data on BVN enrollment count, as of April 2024, 61.6 million Nigerians have BVN.
