SERAP Mulls Legal Action Against CBN Over New Regulation
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) threatened to sue the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) if it doesn’t withdraw a recently published regulation, ‘the Customer Due Diligence Regulations 2023′ released on Friday, June 23, 2023.
“All financial institutions — including banks, credit unions, and savings and loan organisations — must collect and verify customers’ social media handles”.
CBN stated that the reason for the new policy is to increase compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) provisions.
CBN further explained that this information will be combined with other Know Your Customer (KYC) data, like legal names, addresses, contact information, and identification documents, to create a comprehensive customer profile.
SERAP claims that the regulation violates Nigerians’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression.
SERAP stated that since banks and other financial institutions already collect these information, asking for a customer’s social media handles or addresses serves no legitimate purpose.
Because of this, SERAP asked that the CBN repeal the law three days after its receiving and/or publishing its letter or it could sue the apex bank.
Failure to do so would allow SERAP to pursue all available legal remedies to compel the CBN to abide by its request in the public interest.
