Commercial banks have been advised to be flexible in their operations and policies when dealing with poor bank customers in rural areas and communities.

Speaking with Community News during the mid-year thanksgiving programme of Self Economic and Advancement Programme (SEAP), a micro-finance institution in Ilorin, at the weekend, the executive programme director of the organisation, Deacon Olatunde Oladokun, said bank requirements such as international passport, among others, restricted accessibility of the rural poor to banking services.

"Our banks should go to core rural areas and communities to help economic development of the grass roots. Imagine, when you miss the only early morning vehicle plying most of these rural areas, you may not get there again in the next few days. But most of our banks rather concentrate their services among established organisations in urban areas and they will still want to give out loans at the same interest rate to these villagers with high population. Meanwhile, these grass roots people can in turn help the society when assisted", he said.

Deacon Oladokun, who commended the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for the biometric registration of bank customers, said the project would help to expose fraudulent bank customers.

He also said the exercise would help financial institutions at detecting customers, who take loan by proxy, using different identities.

The SEAP programme director, who hailed the new CBN governor for the removal of COT charges said the removal of the charges, among other bank deductions on accounts of manufacturers and businessmen, would aid the expansion and job creation efforts of these organisations.

The SEAP boss also said that the prevalent security situation in the country had made micro-finance institutions and banks in the country to experience defaults.

He said insecurity and lack of adequate infrastructure were some of the challenges faced by micro-finance institutions in the country, adding that people should contribute to the growth of financial institutions by taking loans they would be able to pay back.