Mallam Kasimu Garba Kurfi is Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the APT Securities and Funds Limited and a major player in the capital market sector of Nigerian economy.

Mallam Kasimu Garba Kurfi.

He spoke to BASHIR ADEFAKA in Lagos about his life and the ongoing implementation process for the non-interest banking system by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Excerpts:

At 46, you run a successful securities and funds company. Does sthat make you a fulfilled person? What other thing do you want in life? I thank God for the little I have achieved and I am contented with them.

I mean, I am Council Member, of the Nigerian Stock Exchange; Board Member, APT Pension Funds Services Limited; Board Member, Arewa Containers Limited; Trustee Member, Islamic Development Foundation Intern, Lagos and above all Chairman Board of Directors, MTI Plc.

I have also held other positions like membership of the Education Committee, Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers and so on. I am also the Chairman of Madarasatul Dinul Islam (MDI), FESTAC Town, Lagos. The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, appears set to begin implementation of its policy on non-interest banking system.

As a major player in the capital market sector of Nigerian economy, what is your understanding of this policy and how workable do you think it will be in the context of Nigeria? I think it is a welcome development.

This policy is long overdue in the sense that quite a number of other parts of the world including developed countries like Britain and many of them have gone far in non-interest banking.

Today it is widely accepted that non-interest banking controls over $850 billion and this is one of the most elastically growing institutions in the financial sector. So for us to be talking about the policy in the year 2011, I believe that it’s long overdue. And don’t forget that this is the policy that was initiated as far back as 2003.

That was when the idea of non-interest banking system came and then it was stopped because of the consolidation of the banking sector in 2005 when the Governor of the CBN, at that time, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, put minimum shareholders capital at N25 billion.

That was what stopped the JAIS, which should have been the first financial organisation to do it in Nigeria, from taking off immediately. It is good that the CBN is coming back to it because there is no better time to come about it than now.

It is obvious all over the world that during the global economic meltdown, most of the financial products couldn’t sustain their positions leading to heavy losses but to our greatest surprise, for the period the global economic meltdown lasted, the non-interest banking products, in countries where they were being operated, were not affected. Why was it so? Yes.

That was the same expression on the lips of many people. People began to wonder why this did not happen? One of the reasons is that, non-interest products don’t pile debts and because of that, the economic meltdown did not affect them. And we believe that most of the other countries that had financial challenges, it is heavily because of the compounded interests.

The problem with interest is, once it is compounded, it can go bad beyond any reasonable level. That is why you see people taking N1 million, N2 million but, if they do not pay and the interests keep on compounding and after five to 10 years you would see that they would have sacrificed all their assets in the effort to pay back their debts. And that is the problem of compounding interests.

In whose interest can we say Mallam Sanusi, the CBN governor, is bringing the issue of non-interest banking at this time? In the national interest. Yes. Some people say he is bringing up the issue as Central Bank governor because he is a Mallam. But they should not forget that this non-interest banking thing started as far back as 2003 when Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo was governor of the CBN. Don’t forget again that Soludo is a Christian, not a Mallam.

The issue at stake is national interest without any sectional inclination. Soludo set the framework. It’s only because his tenure was not extended, he would have approved its implementation before he left office. Okay, if you are talking about it being inclined towards somebody being a Muslim, let me ask you: What is the population of Muslims in Britain?

They don’t constitute up to five percent of the British population but go and see the number of the non-interest banking products that have been running there. There are also a large of number of other products that you can vividly say are Islamic and they are running there successfully.

It is so because the British society has no sectional motive against anything provided they know that such thing has extended value in the interest of their citizens and the country as a whole. You can call them Islamic products, you can call them non-interest products but the truth of the matter is that, when you are talking of interest, it is not only the Muslims that kick against it.

Catholics kick against interest. And if you look at it all over the world, these are major players that deposit and play those products without interest. Even in the context of our own country, Nigeria, the Central Bank’s policy and guidelines make everything clear about the product that it is not Islamic but just a non-interest product that can bring a lot of benefits to our economy and the people of Nigeria.

We know what interest has caused our economy particularly in the area of foreign debts. If not by the virtue of Okonjo-Iweala together with President Olusegun Obasanjo, at that time, getting out of that foreign debts mess that we were plunged into as a result of accumulated interests of the time would have proved difficult because we would not have been able to come out of it easily.

That is why, even in other countries, interest is highly detested because its consequences on the economy is enormously undesirable. What do you think would be the implication of non-interest banking if it eventually becomes operational in the Nigerian banking sector?

The implication is positive. By the time the beauty and usefulness of the non-interest products start to come, people will embrace it, which means people will start running away from the contemporary banks and the contemporary banks too, at that time, will have no option than to also embrace non-interest banking if they have to retain customers so that they will not be left out.

Profile:
Name:    Mallam Kasimu Garba Kurfi.
Date of birth:    January 2, 1965.
Place of birth:    Kaduna State.
Education:     LEA Primary School, Kurfi, Kaduna State;
Teachers College, Kaduna; Bayero Univ-        ersity, Kano (B.Sc Accounting, 1987) and         University of Lagos, Akoka, M.Sc Account-        ing, 1998).
Present position:    MD/CEO, APT Securities and Funds                 Limited.
Strength of Character:    Godliness and self-discipline.