CBN, financial institutions to introduce savings account for financial inclusion – SANEF

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and some other financial institutions have designed a government savings account to capture financially excluded Nigerians into the banking system.
The Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF) report, disclosed that the savings account would have features of insurance, pension and micro credit.
SANEF is a project powered by the CBN, commercial banks, Nigeria Interbank Settlement Systems, licensed Mobile Money Operators (MMOs) and share agents.
According to the report, the technical committee in charge of the initiative is liaising with the CBN and the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) to secure approval and launch the product on Oct.1.
It also said that other products planned to be introduced would include micro retail loans, micro retail savings, retail insurance and micro pension.
The report said that the project would deepen financial beneficiaries, and those interested in this field.
Moreover, this data is also used for the evaluation of activities and events conducted by the entities concerned with serving the pilgrims, as well as to identify ways of the arrival of domestic pilgrims and the pilgrims coming from outside the Gulf Kingdom.
Record Numbers Remarkably, during the past 25 years, the number of pilgrims exceeded three million pilgrims per year only once, while their number exceeded two million pilgrims 12 times.
During the last ten years, the number of pilgrims was 23,834,151.
Interestingly, the highest number of pilgrims was registered in 2011 (1433H) when 3,161,573 performed the annual pilgrimage.
On the other hand, during two seasons, their number fell below two million, with the lowest number of pilgrims recorded in 1995 (1415H) which brought 1,781,370 pilgrims.
Muslims from around the world pour into Makkah every year to perform hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam.
Hajj consists of several rituals, which are meant to symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon them.
Every able-bodied adult Muslim who can financially afford the trip must perform hajj at least once in a lifetime.
Hajj is officially expected to fall this year between Sunday, 19th of August 2018 and will continue till Friday, 24th of August 2018.