Jos: Bank Customers Seek Extension Of BVN Deadline

Bank customers in Jos
have called for the extension of the ongoing Bank Verification Number (BVN) exercise which started nationwide, last year.
The Tide source reports that the verification which involved the capturing of customers’ biometric details, was ordered by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in its bid to enhance the security features on personal accounts.
With its June 30, 2015 deadline around the corner, our correspondents who visited some banks on Wednesday, met a horde of customers struggling to be captured.
At the Secretariat branch of the First Bank, customers struggled for spaces into the bank as they strived to beat the deadline.
Some of them said that they were determined to be captured, while others urged the CBN to extend the deadline, to ensure that all bank customers were captured.
Mr Barnabas Adamu, a teacher and customer with Diamond Bank, expressed dissatisfaction with the speed of the exercise, saying that he was likely to spend the whole day on the queue.
“I postponed all my engagements to complete the exercise today, but it does not appear that I will be able to do that,’’ he said.
Another customer, Mr Yohanna Davou, a customer with the First Bank of Nigeria Plc (FBN), noted that the time frame for the exercise was “rather short’’.
The deadline is less than a week, but you can see that many of us are still hanging here, unsure of our fate,’’ he said.
Davou equally called for the extension of the BVN deadline, to enable all customers to be captured.
Mrs Martha Dung, an aged woman customer with Guarantee Trust Bank (GTB), said that she left home before 7.30 a.m. and had remained on the queue till 2 p.m.
Dung advised banks to deploy more officers to carry out the exercise, so as to capture the multitude that keeps thronging the banks to be registered.
Some bank customer care officers, who spoke  on condition of anonymity, said that they were “helpless’’ about the situation.
“There is indeed a crowd but that is because they did not bother to come for the BVN much earlier,’’ an official said.
They declined to comment on pleas for an extension of the deadline.
“That is clearly beyond us. We cannot speak on that,’’ a female customer care personnel, said at a new generation bank branch in the metropolis.