Sanusi tells Sterling Bank to increase agric lending

Muhammadu Sanusi II, Emir of Kano
Muhammadu Sanusi II, Emir of Kano, has charged the management of Sterling Bank to focus more on agriculture financing in support of the Federal Government’s goals of diversifying the economy to address the country’s almost total dependence on proceeds from the oil and gas sector.

Sanusi who is also a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) advised the bank to build on its pioneering work in Non-Interest Banking (NIB) by focusing on the agriculture sector. He said this while delivering a keynote address at a one-day conference organized by Sterling Bank on Non-Interest Banking in Kano recently.

In 2017, Sterling Bank Plc won the Best Bank in Support of Agriculture Award at the Business Day Banking Awards and Agric Bank of the Year 2017 at the Nigeria Agriculture Awards Committee. The bank also won the Best Agric Finance Bank of the Year 2016 from the Zamfara branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Best Performing Bank under the Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme (CACS).

According to the Emir, the business community which had hitherto depended on conventional banking models can now enjoy profit sharing and have insurance cover on funds while reducing poverty in the society, among other benefits with the advent of Non-Interest Banking.

”With Non-Interest Banking, it is now inexcusable for people not to be banked or under-banked”, the Emir said.

Also, Sanusi advised the management of Sterling Bank to crisscross the commercial city of Kano to educate the business community that by adopting Non-Interest Banking, they are reducing poverty, as well as imbibing the culture of frugality.

Earlier, in his welcome address, the bank’s CEO Designate, Mr Abubakar Suleiman, urged members of the Kano business community to adopt Non-Interest Banking. He said it would enable them to lend their surplus to the bank that would, in turn, extend it to aspiring and emerging entrepreneurs as well as needy members of the public, who will invest it in their respective business enterprise.


Suleiman, whose elevation as the Managing Director of Sterling Bank, takes effect from April, disclosed that all those who adopt Non-Interest Banking will be covered by insurance in the event of incurring any loss, which is absent in conventional banking.

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