By Oluwaseun Sonde
Nigerian Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed has said that lack of primary skills on how to manage, save and invest money was one of the reasons why public employees experienced financial troubles.
Ahmed who made this known at the flag off ceremony of Service-Wide Financial Literacy in the Work Place Programme on Financial Inclusion, in Abuja recently, said this programme will help most public servants that do not cultivate effective saving habit rather they spend more than what they earn.
The Minister represented by the Permanent Secretary, Aliyu Ahmed, emphasized that the programme was to sensitize and educate government employees on financial literacy for inclusion in the work place as it has continued to gain attention globally because of its important role in economic development and poverty alleviation.
She declared that as a way of lending collaborative support to this initiative the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Ministry signed a tripartite agreement in 2014 with the Melinda Gate Foundation to implement Digital Financial Inclusion Projects in Nigeria with the target of driving the achievement of 80% financial inclusion target by the year 2020.
Ahmed stated that the National Financial Inclusion Strategy was developed and launched in 2012 and revised in 2019 as part of commitment to further enhance the level of financial inclusion in Nigeria and by implication, sustain inclusive economic growth.
She informed that the programme will be extended to other MDAs, come January 2023 when the pilot target would be expected to reach a total number of 12, 000 government employees by December 2022.
In his welcome address, the Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, Shehu Aliyu Shinkafi, noted that most employees in the public sector ‘simply earned to consume which was largely due to lack of financial literacy which denotes lack of understanding on how money works, earned, managed and to invest and plan for the future’.
He stated that the programme was designed to educate and sensitize officers in MDAs on financial literacy for inclusion as part of measures to ensure the objective of the programme was achieved in line with year 2023 financial inclusion target.
In furtherance of this, the Ministry had set out series of activities ranging from the flag off ceremony to a 5 day training of Trainers (ToT) Workshop on Financial Literacy for 25 Officers from the implementing Department by CBN and German Development Cooperation - GIZ as well as monitoring of MDAs performance.
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