Abstract:
The study carried out an empirical evaluation of the Marketing Communications Campaigns (MCC) used by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to execute the Nigerian banking sector reforms in the period 2004 – 2007. The study became necessary due to the perennial distress in the Nigerian banking sector which was traced to poor capital base/seeming ineffectiveness of the Apex Bank’s MCCs used to inform, remind and persuade the banks and other stakeholders in the industry and the general public about the policies, services and directives to be implemented. The CBN has been using MCCs as veritable tools for banking sector control measures since its inception in 1959 without any evidence of empirically evaluated and documented campaign’s outcomes to guide future decision making of the CBN and for use by similar bodies and researchers. These therefore inform the essence of this study which sought to determine the amount of influence the CBN campaigns for banking sector reforms, currency restructuring, the use of coins and stop the abuse of the Naira had on the general public and possibly design a credible and detailed MCCs model for CBN, researchers and other interest groups. The method adopted was survey design which used structured questionnaire to generate data for hypothesis testing. The results show that the CBN’s campaigns had significant influence on the general public for the successful establishment of 1,048 microfinance banks, introduction of N50, N20, N10, and N5 Naira banknotes and N2, N1 and 50kobo coins on February 28, 2007. In addition, the CBN campaigns to stop the abuse of the Naira on 25th May, 2007 attracted a Federal legislation which stipulated six (6) months jail or N50,000 fine or both on any abuse on the Naira. The six (6) geo-political zones in Nigeria were covered with three (3) states selected from each zone plus Abuja the federal capital territory. A sample size of (784) was determined from the population of the selected 19 locations (86,023,310). Purposive sampling technique was used for CBN officials while the sample size for the general public was statistically calculated using Taro Yamane’s sample size determination formula. Cronbach’s Alpha was used to measure the reliability index of research instrument. Percentages and descriptive statistics such as chi-square, correlation/linear regression aided by the Microsoft (SPSS) were used for data analysis and interpretation. The CBN campaigns succeeded in influencing the public on all other projects but failed to achieve significant influence on the Nigerian public on the use of the coins in their transactions and the abuse of the Naira. The study developed a campaigns model known as Banking Sector Reforms communications (BSRC) model that will make CBN’s campaigns more incisive, more appealing and more result oriented.
