Bank Regulation and Reforms: For What? Rural Areas Transformed?

Abstract

Regulations and Reforms in Nigerian Banks to enable social banking aredesirable. The problem has been banks� stunted growth from arm-chairbanking to social banking. The recent recapitalization and merging of banksfor bigger business, risk and profit is a step in the right direction. But theproblem remains if the erstwhile 89 Nigerian banks equal numbers 2 and 3South African banks or the current 24 recapitalized Nigerian banks equalnumber 2 South African banks. Nor is this all. More importantly, socialbanking which is mainly the development of rural or poor areas has not been met. Therefore, there is the need to test the hypothesis that there is no relationship between regulation or reforms and transformation of the rural areas. Regression method is utilized. The major findings include low ACGSF loans/Advances and low agricultural GDP. Therefore, it is recommended that the government should direct its budget to capture more banks� loans/Advances for the real or rural sector proxied by agriculturaldevelopment.