By Amaka Abayomi
The Managing Director of Lift Above Poverty Organization (LAPO) Microfinance Bank Limited, Mr. Godwin Ehigiamusoe, has called for adequate empowerment of microfinance bank (MFB) operators for them to be able to deliver responsive and affordable financial services that would boost public image of the sector.

According to Ehigiamusoe, “Improving public confidence can be achieved if MFB operators are empowered so as to deliver a responsive and affordable services to their customers. And to effectively do that, there is need for a well structured capacity enhancing programme in be on ground, and I think that is what the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) wants to achieve with the certification programme.

“There is also the urgent need to support MFBs with refinancing facilities for them to have easy access to funds that would be given as credit to people. this is because there are glaring indications that savings mobilisation alone would not provide them with such fund.

“There was a recent report about an increase in access to financial services and I know that despite the challenges MFBs face, they equally contributed to the growth of access to financial services by Nigerians”
Ehigiamusoe called for sufficient funding and proper infrastructure for the microfinance sector so as to reduce running costs incured by most MFB operators

“Proper infrastructure is important because we run on generators in all our branches and they must be maintained, and this is applicable to other MFBs and it has additional cost implications.”

The LAPO boss stated that the six clients’ protection principles, which was agreed upon by the international microfinance community, is to protect clients against any possible exploitation, unethical practices by MFBs or operators.

“The reason for the protection is because the main clients of MFBs are usually not effectively empowered to engage the MFBs in professional business relationship. For instance, most customers do not have the right education or access to some basic information, so there is therefore the possibility that they can be undermined by operators.This necessitated the formulation of the six principles.

“The six principles are very clear and involve having pricing that are affordable in terms of interest rates and other charges, not using unethical process to make demands for repayment, maintaining the privacy of clients, etc. Therefore, it is important for MFBs to incorporate these principles into their service delivery procedures.