INFORMATION NEEDS OF BANKERS IN NIGERIA: A STUDY OF ZENITH BANK PLC IN BENIN, EDO STATE

Abstract

The need for information has become a critical business resource because its absence could result in poor decisions and ultimately business failure. This research examines the information needs of the Nigerian Banking Industry with specific reference to information needs of Zenith Bank staff of Benin environs of Edo State. The researcher adopted three research questions such as; what are the information needs of the Zenith Bank Staff, what are the sources of information needs of the staff, and what are the challenges associated with information needs of the staff. Judgmental sampling method was used to obtain a representative sample of 85 out of a population of 106 representing (80.2%) of the total distribution. It is observed that accessibility to information can improve banks performance by reducing operational cost and by facilitating transactions among customers within the same or different network. The findings discovered that the status of the bankers, the cashiers and the bulk teller's constitute the highest number in the staff list.The various information needs include social information needs, personal information needs and health information needs etc. Bankers' required professional information for effective service delivery, the commonly identified sources are through friends, customers of the bank, conventional postage, global system and fax machines. The researcher concluded that despite the importance of information, there are lack of consistent and affordable electricity, computing infrastructure for effective banking service, bank informatics, lack of affordable connectivity and bandwidth. The researchers recommended that for Zenith bank staff to meet their various information needs they ought to established information centers or libraries in their various branches of the banks to provide readymade professional banking information such as selective dissemination of information (SDI) and facilities such as affordable network connectivity, power supply, professional journals, textbooks, newspapers, magazines, reference materials, dictionaries etc., for effective information delivery.