Adeduntan made this known on Tuesday at opening of the 12th Annual Banking and Finance Conference of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), in Abuja.

The theme of the conference is “the future of Nigerian banking sector 360”.

The First Bank CEO said that the bank would support all effort to ensure effective financial inclusion in the country.

“We have a very ambitious plan to appoint about 500,000 agents across the nook and cranny of our country and to ensure that banking facilities and services are made available to our people.

“The Acting Governor of Central Bank, Joseph Nnanna, has also highlighted that the primary purpose for the Central Bank for choosing minimum loan to deposit ratio to 60 per cent is to stimulate the economy.

“This is because without credit, the economy cannot grow,” he said.

According to him, the banking sector remains the primary partners to government as far as economic growth and development are concerned.

He noted that change in the industry was unprecedented especially with the available technology and the leveraging on artificial intelligence, robotic operations, among others.

“If we do not integrate those opportunities and mainstream them properly the country and the entire economy will be left behind,” he added.

He called on participants to ensure robots participation in order to get blue print of what could help the sector for the growth and development of the economy.

It was reported that Adeduntan is the chairman of the organising committee of the conference.

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It was gathered that the drill was an annual exercise carried out by the bank to ensure safety of life and property.

Our correspondent learnt the exercise involved emergency evacuation of staff and customers to ensure that the safety measures put in place by the banks were functioning properly.

A senior officer of the bank, who preferred anonymity told our correspondent that “it is an internal affair; it is a fire drill that we usually have all the time.

“It is carried out by the bank to ensure all the safety measures we have put in place are working so that no life or property will be lost in case of any fire incident.

“We also try to ensure that people respond to the alarm by evacuating the premises immediately so that if there is any problem, nobody will be a casualty”.

The officer said the bank had provided several exit points for free passage of people in case of crises.

The officer also assured customers not to panic in case of any crises as their monies were kept in a strong fire-proof safe.

Earlier, there were speculations by some customers that the bank was on fire, which made some of them to panic about the safety of their money in the bank.

A customer, Mr Hassan Ibrahim, told our correspondent that he was just about entering the bank when he saw people running out, and the first thing that came to his mind was the safety of his money.

Ibrahim said“ I am a civil servant, who will be retiring from service any moment from now, and I almost collapsed when I heard fire.

“Thank God it was a false alarm and there is no problem; I am also very impressed with the bank in the way it is ensuring safety in the premises”.

Another customer, Mrs Ada Okeh, said the bank should ensure more exit points to allow free passage of people in case of crises in the bank.

Okeh said the place was really choked when people were trying to leave the bank after the fire alarm went off.

She said, “I am happy for the measure the bank is putting in place and thank God there were no casualty in the process of running out of the bank to safety”.

Our correspondent observed that more than 60 people, comprising staff and customers of the bank watched the exercise.

Also, some security officers from the Federal Fire Service were present to observe the exercise.

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