Nigeria has only 3,500 professional insurance practitioners – CIIN President

The President of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, CIIN, Fatai Kayode Lawal has expressed concern over the dwindling number of professional insurance practitioners in Nigeria.

Lawal said even though Nigeria’s population stood at over 160 million, it has only 3500 professionally qualified insurance practitioners.

The CIIN boss, who stated this in Enugu during the presentation of insurance books to tertiary institutions in the Eastern zone of the country, noted that the only way insurance could penetrate every nook and cranny of Nigeria was to get more people involved as crusaders for insurance.

According to him, “today, Nigerian population has just about 3,500 professionally qualified insurance practitioners out of about 160,000,000 people.

“Getting only 3,500 out of this figure is a far cry. The only way we can insurance to penetrate every nook and cranny of this country is to get more people involved as crusaders for insurance”.

On the achievement of his administration, Lawal said it had within six months worked concertedly towards the actualization of its 5-point agenda.

He further explained that the donation of books to tertiary institutions was part of a series of actions geared at accelerating the empowerment of institutions offering insurance courses across Nigeria.

He affirmed his commitment to pursue other goals, which included development of study centers in accredited tertiary institutions and the encouragement of lecturers in such institutions by ensuring that they have access to relevant information about insurance and to avail them the opportunity and exposure to conferences and seminars on insurance.

He used the opportunity to announce that the governing council had completed the production and commissioning of an insurance course book for secondary schools.

Lawal also disclosed that the institute has initiated a campaign to encourage insurance professionals to take up teaching positions either on full or part time basis in order to tackle the dearth of teachers and lecturers.

The schools that benefited from the free books were the Institute of Management and Technology, IMT, the Enugu State University of Science and Technology, ESUT, and the Federal Polytechnic Oko, in Anambra State.