NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Although the advent of mobile money in Nigeria is more than two years and over 21 operators in the sector have been licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria, more than 70 per cent of Nigerians say they have not heard of mobile money.

This is according to a survey on financial literacy done by the Central Bank of Nigeria released yesterday. The survey which took a sample of 13,286 respondents across the country showed that more Nigerians are still not financially literate.

The survey which was to illustrate current levels of awareness and understanding of various financial and economic terms and levels of knowledge of financial processes also showed that very few people, 7.6 per cent have heard of Point-of-Sale, and of terms like bonds, stocks and mortgages.

Also more than a third of Nigerians (35.9 million) have not heard of pensions or a current account, while a third (32.8 million) have not heard the terms interest or current account.