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Islamic bank to begin operation in South West

By on August 4, 2015

The South-West zonal committee for the operation of Jaiz Bank Plc said the bank would begin operation in Ibadan and other cities in the South-West towards the end of the year after all documents and other logistics would have been perfected.

The revelation was made in Ibadan during the first shareholders’ forum of the bank organised by the committee as part of the sensitisation effort towards the successful establishment of the bank in the South-West region.

The Chairman of the committee, Lasun Sanusi (SAN), said the bank was aware of the teething problems it would face, expressing the optimism, however, that it would survive because of the success it recorded in areas where it was already operating in the country.

The Group Head, Public Sector, Jaiz Bank, Mallam Ismail Adamu, explained that the bank offered non-interest banking services to the public and that it began operation in the North-East and North-West regions on June 1, 2012 after obtaining licence in November 2011.

Adamu, who represented the bank’s Managing Director, Muhammad Nurul-Islam, at the forum, described the bank as a bridge between the poor and the rich with a capital base of N42bn and that presently, it had 139,977 customers in places where it was operating.

He said the bank made a profit of N157m in 2014 and gave out up to N500m in charity through an arm of the bank called Jaiz Foundation. While explaining how the bank renders its services, Adamu said Jaiz Bank had facility for mobile banking, Automated Teller Machine and internet banking.

An economist who specialises in banking operation, Prof. Abdul-Hakeem Mobolaji, in his lecture condemned ‘exploitative’ interest rate charged by Nigerian banks and urged the Central Bank of Nigeria to relax its regulations for Islamic banks to grow.

He wondered how four of the leading banks in Nigeria would declare N335bn as profit in 2014 when millions of Nigerians were unemployed and living in poverty.

He said, “Islamic bank grows at an annual rate of 17.6 per cent and its existence in Nigeria dated back to 1892. The bank is not only for Moslems. In Britain, 73 per cent of those who patronised the bank are non-Moslems. This is the first non-interest bank in Nigeria with 20 branches in the North. This year has been targeted for the take-off of its operation all over Nigeria.

 

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