By Elizabeth Adegbesan
About 29.4 million bank accounts in commercial banks were recorded as closed as at March 2025 as banks make efforts to clean their books of questionable accounts and comply with regulatory order on linkage of bank accounts to National Identity Number, NIN.
This figure, however, represents a full recovery as the banks’ books showed 33.29 million closed accounts the previous month of February, which was a new high from 29.43 million recorded in January.
The March 2025 figure represents a 30.43 percent or 6.86 million year-on-year (YoY) increase in the number of closed bank accounts compared to 22.54 million bank accounts closed in March 2024.
These were contained in the latest data of the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, NIBSS, which also indicated that the number of dormant or inactive bank accounts grew by 13.6 million or 71.3 percent YoY to 33.39 million in March 2025 from 19.79 million in the corresponding period of 2024.
A bank account is classified inactive when it records zero transactions including deposits, withdrawals, transfers or point-of-sale transactions for six months.
However, details of the “Industry Bank Account Database”, data reported by banks, and compiled by the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, NIBSS, also indicated that the number of active bank accounts grew by 100.41 million or 45.7 percent YoY to 320.05 million in March 2025 from 219.64 million in March 2024.
Recall that in December 2023, the CBN issued a directive to all commercial banks in the country to restrict tier-1 accounts without proper Biometric Verification Number, BVN, and National Identity Number, NIN, that are not linked by Thursday, March 1st, 2024.
According to NIBSS data on BVN enrollment count, 66.23 million Nigerians have BVN as at July 2025 compared to 61.6 million as at April 2024.
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