Unic Press UK: The Nigerian Senate has passed four resolutions with regard to a motion ‘illicit and excessive charges by Nigerian banks in customers’ accounts with particular focus on Automated Teller Machine (ATM) maintenance and withdrawal charges’ presented by Senator Gbenga Ashafa (APC – Lagos East), calling on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to suspend the ATM card maintenance charges that banks’ have been deducting from customers’ accounts.
During a plenary session Wednesday, the Senate resolved to:
- Direct the Committees on Banking Insurance & other Financial Institutions and Finance to conduct an investigation into the propriety of ATM card maintenance charges in comparison with international best practices and report back to the Senate;
- Mandate the Committees on Banking, Insurance & other Financial Institutions and Finance to invite the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria to appear before the Committee in order to explain why the official charges as approved by the CBN are skewed in favour of the banking institutions as against the ordinary customers of the banks;
- Urge the Central Bank of Nigeria to suspend the ATM card maintenance charges being deducted from customers account as well as instructing the commercial banks to configure their machines to extend to N40,000 per withdrawal pending the outcome of the investigation by the committees and;
- Urge the Consumer Protection Council to be up and doing in taking up the plight of ordinary Nigerians by looking into the various complaints of excess and unnecessary charges by Nigerian Banks.
