Lagos – The Managing Director of Heritage Bank Ltd., Mr Ifie Sekibo, on Tuesday called on banks to increase awareness on financial inclusion to capture more Nigerians into the financial system.
Sekibo told newsmen in Lagos that it was necessary that all Nigerians understood what financial literacy was all about.
He said: “The ball is shifting; the days when only the formal sector should understand finance are over. Everybody should begin to understand finance.
”They should understand how they spend their money; why we need to save and we need to teach our children why they need to save from now.”
Sekibo said that the media needed to be able to educate people on how and why they should save money and spend in line with their budgets as individuals.
He said that there was need for media to drive the conversation for Nigerians to change their lifestyles and embrace more of Nigerian made products.
“More important for us is the conversation for us on how we need to change our lifestyle.
”We can’t grow an economy where all we want to spend on are dollar-denominated and foreign goods.
”Left for Nigerians, they want to be doing all their spending on dollars, forgetting that dollar is not our local currency,” Sekibo added.
The Heritage Bank boss said that amount spent on dollar gave employment opportunities to some people in other countries.
Sekibo said, ”Everything they do with dollar gives employment to somebody in another country and not in Nigeria. So, we must continue to have that conversation and it must be robust.
“So, it is important as a people to begin to educate our fellow Nigerians on these things.
”It is the financial correspondents that must drive this because this is a very serious issue.
”If we don’t, we would all regret it.”
