The acting governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr. Sarah Alade has challenged students to imbibe a savings and investment culture in order to secure their future.
Alade, who personally took students of Model Secondary School, Maitama on financial literacy on the occasion of the Global Money Week, said introducing students and young ones to financial principle early in their lives would help them appreciate the policies of financial regulators.
Speaking to journalists shortly after her interaction with the students, she said:”We want to introduce our young ones to financial concepts; the idea of saving, investing and all the issues that you have to grapple with in life about money.
“So we want the young ones to be able to get it early in life; cultivate the habit of saving money and not spending all the time and that way, by the time they become adults, they are already familiar with what we are talking about.
“You can see we also talked about cashless, they want to know what we aim to achieve by going cashless. We don’t take children for granted; it is at this age that they need to know and when they grow up, it would have been part and parcel of them,” she said.
Earlier, the acting CBN governor started by seeking to know from the students what they understood by bank accounts and if they operated any.
Alade, who chose to make the class rather interactive in an apparent effort to condescend to their understanding, took them through thought-provoking engagement to the excitement of the students who tried to respond correctly or otherwise questions thrown at them about financial matters.
Meanwhile in Lagos, the group managing director of Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, Mr. Emeka Emuwa who taught students of St. Mary’s Private School, Broad Street, Lagos about financial literacy for over three hours, said the bank adopted the school in furtherance of its commitment towards financial literacy in Nigeria.
The adoption of St. Mary’s by Union Bank, according to Emuwa who is also the chairman of the Financial Literacy and Public Enlightenment Sub-Committee of the Bankers’ Committee, involves a year-long programme of financial literacy support by the bank to the school.
“We, at Union Bank see opportunities such as this, where we are part of the process of educating our children and equipping them for the future, as a privilege,” Emuwa said.
He noted that proper financial education would empower teenagers in making sound financial decisions in the future,” he said.
