Alhaji Sanusi Lamido, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has advised depositors to ensure that they are not short changed by banks by consulting critically on issues relating to charges on transactions they enter into with there respective banks.

This is coming against the background that commercial banks are currently being accused of deducting extraneous charges without the understanding of the depositors.

The CBN governor who was in Government House in Kano on a courtesy call on Governor Ibrahim Shekarau over the weekend assured that the CBN’s position on sanctioning banks found in the illegal act of deducting holden charges still stands even as such banks would also be made to refund the money.

In his words, “customers also need to get consultants and understand when you have a question. When you have a contract with the bank, you should ensure that what you are charged is what you contracted and the CBN has always made sure that if anyone is charged a hidden charge that the bank refunds and sanctions are applied.”

Sanusi denied his earlier purported advice for the presidency to scale down his 7-point agenda to two, saying he only called for the government to perfect on two or three issues that would have brought about better results on a short term.

According to him, “I did not advise him to cut down the 7-point agenda to two; I said that if we focus and prioritise two or three things over the next few years we can achieve much more. They are 2 different things”.

Snusi however, pointed out that it is the role of the CBN to make monetary policies not to pay for infrastructure.

The CBN boss added that he is only performing his other function as a special adviser to the government on economic matters, insisting that the infrastructure issue really needs to be addressed.

Sanusi said his role as economic adviser makes it incumbent on him to draw the attention of government to the right things to be done to move the economy forward.

He acknowledged that the government has already taken care of that in the current budget, the large chunk of which is already devoted to energy and infrastructure.

In the recent reduction of the interest rates from 8 per cent to 6 per cent he said it is one of the strategies of the apex bank to ensure interest rate is reduced to the barest minimum thereby impacting positively on the lending rate in order to encourage industrialists to secure loan.

In his word, “We hope to bring down the rate at which banks lend to one another from 20 per cent to 8 per cent, that will bring about moderating influence on lending. You can see that many industries cannot secure loans at the current lending rate that is unacceptably high”.

Staff and winners of the Springbank Promo organised recently in Port Harcourt. Photo: King Osila.