By Clifford Agugoesi, Editor-in-Chief
On October 28, 2021, Compact Communications Limited rallied journalists(mainly those covering the technology, media and telecommunications(TMT) industry), to a MasterClass as part of a Nigeria’s Telecommunications Revolution At 20 Summit Anniversary Lecture under the theme: Telecommunications in Nigeria; The Revolution And The Next Frontier. The assignment to deliver the MasterClass fell on the shoulders of the Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer(GMD/CEO) of Zenith Bank Plc, Ebenezar Onyeagwu.
The setting was the Shell Hall, MUSON Centre, Lagos. Mr. Onyeagwu spoke on the topic: Telecommunications As A Catalyst For Financial Inclusion. To ensure the audience was not distracted from the business of the day, Onyeagwu told very touching true stories of Nigeria’s telecommunications evolution highlighting the opportunities and challenges.
He began: ”You know, I would like to share one experience for us to see that no matter how bad things are, there are great things happening in this country. There are a number of great things happening. I guess it was in 2008, I went somewhere in the United States of America. We had introduced (at Zenith Bank) credit cards; we had also introduced what we call Alert and Deposit Notification. So where you carry out a transaction, instantly, as your account is debited you get an alert, which is the convention now. I went to a shop in the US and after shopping and I slotted in my card, the owner of the shop said, ‘No. The credit has not reflected, that he was not sure, because he couldn’t print! I said, ”Why are you saying this?” He said: “unless he prints he assumes the transaction did not go through.” As we were going through that, my alert came and I said to him: ‘This is the name of the shop. I have just received a notification that my account had been debited and your account has been credited.’ He looked at it and he said: ‘Yes, the name of the shop is correct; my POS code is correct; the amount is correct. Young man, where are you from? This technology is not in the US yet.” I said: “I am from Nigeria!’ So way back in 2008, when we had things like deposit notification, it wasn’t there in the US as advanced as the US Economy is!” Hello!
He told another story to underscore the criticality of the telecoms sector to other sectors: ”Remember, if the system goes down, the biggest challenge is (Our mandate is to make sure our system doesn’t go down)and as a result, we were spending so much money building infrastructure to see that once one channel fails, there is a fall back to something else. It is telecoms that sustains this. So ladies and gentlemen, I would like to give that before going into the topic.
Well, telecommunications, the way we have seen it, I recall many years ago, I think it was in 1997, I was a branch manager and I was posted to Warri. At that time, telephone line in Warri was a problem; it wasn’t working. And, as a branch manager, even though a telephone was installed in my house, which I considered a source of pride that time, I realise that for the first two months, I was not getting any tone on the line; I had to, on my own, go out to look for a NITEL technician; they became my friends. So, at that time, until 2001, if you had a phone line and you didn’t have a NITEL technician as a friend, your phone was not likely to work. But from 2001, with the evolution or emergence of GSM, everything changed completely! That is the watershed to what we are discussing as the topic today. That marked the beginning of new things to happen. “
Here are the final thoughts of Onyeagwu’s intervention. “Telecom investment will continue to underpine the growth of financial inclusion. Therefore, it is important that all stakeholders have a continuing commitment towards the sustainability of this space. Telecoms capability has given rise to a new set of players- the Fintechs, the mobile money operators, the payment system providers, service providers, They have created new niche businesses for the economy. Without telecoms, we will not have Paystack, Flutterwave, Twiter, name them. They have no capabilities to stand anywhere. Telecoms is that enabler , it is that fibre that is holding this niche and it can only get better. That is why we all need to be committed to this.
Despite the contributions of the telecoms sector to the success of the digital finance services, and advancement of financial inclusion, ongoing investment in telecoms infrastructure and broadband will need to be encouraged. We would like to appeal to NCC to encourage the telcos to increase broadband penetration, not just broadband penetration but also the cost, to recalibrate the cost so that it becomes much more available and accessible. Part of the ecosystem requires for us to boost digital technologies, power and networking space.
5G technology, which is the next phase of telecoms revolution, is one with a big promise- it will, no doubt, deepen financial inclusion as well as economic growth. However, we must tackle the concerns that I raised earlier. Digital literacy, as I said, needs to be taught in primary and secondary school. From the cradle, we need to understand the discipline we need to operate in the digital environment.
Registration of domain names and email addresses should be tied directly to biometrics- the NIN in order to arrest the activities of cybercriminals. Enforcement of SIM registration and payment of penalties by defaulters as required by NCC, to ensure that all SIMs are linked to the NINs of owners. I don’t think we should compromise here, every SIM card should be traceable to a biometric. That way if you perpetuate a crime, you can easily be traced and tracked down. The beauty about what we are seeing telecom is enabling is that you leave an internal footprint. You need a footprint, you can’t walk into a digital environment and not leave a digital footprint. The question is whether what we are seeing we can identify it to someone. Who do we identify the fake websites we see with? Yes, I can see the IP address. The IP address will tell you the location, what of the real individual? It is important that we look at it, not just in Nigeria, but at the global space.
There should be stronger control in the process of reallocation of recycled inactive SIM cards as these are repositories of subscribers banking details. Recycled SIM cards should be purged of the digital content. Banks, telcos, and the Nigerian interbank settlement system should continue to engage the API to ensure that swapped SIMs are disconnected from the banks networks until they are properly authenticated.
Implementation of the procedure and planning and removing fake and malicious websites to prevent them from being used to defraud unsuspecting individuals. Here, I would be making an appeal to NITDA and NCC to see how these can be implemented so that once there is a fake website, that we know is fraudulent, once we report there should be a process to ensure they are brought down immediately; we don’t need to wait until that website has defrauded a good number of us because when one of us has been defrauded all of us have been defrauded.
Improved synergy between regulators and telecommunication companies
Telecommunications will continue to facilitate the pace of digital transformation in every sector of the economy including the financial sector. Even the eNaira that we launched will not be possible unless we have reliable and dependable telecoms connectivity. “
My take from the 5-minutes video that depicts Zenith Bank Plc’s journey of financial inclusion, as presented by Mr. Onyeagwu, is that Zenith invested in telecommunications because it needed reliability on its connectivity, plus the fact that presently, the bank is at the forefront of driving financial inclusion in Nigeria and other climes where it has a footprint.
The man, Ebenezar Onyeagwu briefly
He is a seasoned banker and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), with over 3 decades of banking experience. He is also an alumnus of the University of Oxford, England and Salford Business School, University of Salford Manchester, United Kingdom. At the University of Oxford, he obtained a Postgraduate diploma in Financial Strategy and a certificate in Macroeconomics, while he obtained a Masters Degree in Financial Services from the University of Salford. He also holds an MBA from Delta State University, Abraka. He undertook extensive Executive Level Education in Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia Business School of Columbia University, Harvard Business School of Harvard University in the USA.
Mr. Onyeagwu is the Chairman of Zenith Pensions Custodians Limited and Zenith Nominees Limited. He is also on the Board of Zenith Bank UK, Limited, FMDQ Holdings Plc, Shared Agent Network Expansion Facilities(SANEF) Limited and Lagos State Securities Trust Fund(LSSTF). Mr. Onyeagwu is also a member of the International Monetary Conference (IMC), Wall Street Journal CEO Council, Member, African Trade Gateway Advisory Council of the Africa Export-Import(Afrexim) Bank.
He also served on the Board of Zenith Bank Ghana Limited, Zenith General Insurance, Zenith Securities Limited, Zenith Assets Management Company, Zenith Medicare Limited and Africa Finance Corporation(AFC)…
*Editor’s Note: Watch this space for more exciting revelations from the MasterClass
