Online banking all over the world is supposed to make banking
easy and swift. But when you get to many internet banking centres in Nigeria,
especially in the rural area, majority of the mounted Automated Teller Machines
(ATM) lack cash or have never worked. The few ATM with cash, you find a lot of queues
of people waiting to use the service. Most times close to a thousand of people
on a line, spending twice the amount of hours while ordinarily behind the
counter, withdrawer shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes.
In big cities like
Lagos, Portharcourt, the banks are trying to outdo one another in the area of online banking and personal banking, however,
most of the ATM especially in less commercial areas, constantly fail customers,
largely due to lack of service, cash etc thereby eroding the essence of
personal banking and the cashless policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
In states like Ondo, Edo, Delta, Kwara, Jigawa, Bauchi,
Sokoto, Gombe,Adamawa, Osun and many others less commercially viable states, despite
the presence of these banks, withdrawing money through the ATM and other forms
of Internet Banking system is as difficult as working for the money itself. Customers
most times have to travel for hours to get to use the ATM. It is even more
horrible in local communities of those states sometimes with one ATM centres
serving over Ten thousand customers.
One thing that is worthy of note is the level at which many
of these banks quickly spread across communities without considering the
peculiarities of the people of such localities who had to walk or most times
ride on bike for hours just to try to use the ATM but only to be disappointed
by their services.
Although some of the banks like Guarantee Trust Bank (GTB), Diamond
Bank are doing well in the area of online banking and ATM services, they need
to be as effective in the rural areas just like they are trying to be in big
cities because every customer is important as long as the banks accept their
money.
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