Boniface Okoro in Umuahia
Abia State marked its first-ever World Savings Day (WSD) celebration this year, 102 years after the global event began.
Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) sponsored the celebration of the 2025 edition in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, focusing on inculcating a saving culture among Nigerian children and creating public awareness on the mandate of the corporation in the financial sector.
Though the event is celebrated every October 31, the 2025 edition was celebrated in Abia on February 25, 2026 with the theme: ‘This is Not a Savings Account’, which highlighted that saving is a mindset, culture, and pathway to empowerment.
Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Schools, Elder Goodluck Ubochi, while declaring the event open, thanked NDIC for the initiative, emphasising that saving is an attitudinal issue, not dependent on income volume.
“Saving money is an attitudinal issue, not dependent on the volume of money one has,” Ubochi said. He encouraged students to develop a saving habit, starting with small amounts, and praised NDIC for targeting young people which would help to improve financial literacy in the state.
“I want to thank God for this very moment when we are all gathered to get some level of education as it pertains to our attitude towards saving. Sometimes people find it difficult to save money, even workers. Sometimes, they tend to think that the capacity to save money depends on how much you earn.
“When you don’t have the attitude, even if you are paid a million naira per week, you may still find it difficult to save it,” the commissioner said.
He stressed that the essence of the programme was to help the children to develop the attitude of saving or “get the habit at this very level.”
“And any habit you imbibe at this level stays with you. That’s why I consider this very programme very,” he added.
He advised the students to participate actively to enable them to reap “the real benefit” of the programme because it would help them to develop a habit that will help them all their life. “If you have the habit of saving, you can save little by little over time and you find out that you have made a very large pool of resources that can be used for meaningful activities,” he said.
The interactive forum featured paper presentations by the Deputy Manager, Research Policy and International Relations Department, Dr. Matthew Adeboje, whose paper was titled: ‘Mandate and Operations of NDIC’ and a Senior Manager in the NDIC Communication and Public Affairs Department, Mrs. Chinenye Chimezie-Amadi, whose paper titled: ‘Beyond Savings: Building Financial Resilience’, explained financial resilience as overcoming financial shocks and managing crises while working towards set goals.
The World Savings Day was established on October 31, 1924, during the first International Savings Bank Congress (World Society of Savings Banks) in Milan, Italy. They resolved that the day should be devoted to the promotion of savings all over the world.
However, nowadays, the focus of the banks that organise the WSD is on developing countries, where many people are unbanked.
