What we do
The work of building a market.
Advocacy, training, research, standards, awareness and collaboration — six programmes that exist because no single institution can deliver them alone.
Why an association
Why an association, and not just nine good institutions?
Every non-interest institution in Nigeria faces the same four constraints, and none of them can be solved from inside a single bank.
Liquidity is the first. A conventional bank with surplus cash buys a treasury bill overnight. A non-interest bank cannot — that would be interest income — so its surplus sits idle. Fixing this requires new instruments, and new instruments require regulatory approval that no one institution can obtain alone.
Talent is the second. Nigeria's universities produce accountants and bankers. They produce very few people who can structure an ijara, audit a takaful fund, or sit on an Advisory Committee of Experts. Every member competes for the same small pool, and every member would be better off if the pool were larger.
Understanding is the third. A bank can advertise its products. It cannot, on its own, shift a national assumption that non-interest banking is a religious service rather than a financial one — an assumption that costs the whole industry customers.
Consistency is the fourth. If a murabaha is documented one way in Lagos and another in Kano, international investors discount the entire market.
Those four problems are NIFIAN's agenda.
01 — Advocacy
Industry advocacy and policy
We take one industry position to the regulator, backed by evidence, instead of nine competing ones.
Non-interest finance in Nigeria sits inside a regulatory architecture that was designed for interest-based finance. Most of the friction the industry experiences is not hostility — it is a rulebook that simply did not anticipate an asset-backed transaction.
A murabaha home purchase, for example, involves the bank buying a property and reselling it. Under a tax code written for lending, that can look like two taxable transfers rather than one financing. Multiply that across every contract type and you have the industry's core policy agenda.
Liquidity instruments
The industry's most acute structural problem. NIFIAN has worked with the CBN on Shariah-compliant liquidity management tools — a non-interest master repurchase agreement, non-interest asset-backed securities and non-interest notes — so that member banks can manage surplus funds without breaching their own principles.
Tax neutrality
Ensuring that asset-backed structures are not taxed more heavily than the economically equivalent loan, across VAT, capital gains tax and stamp duties.
Recapitalisation
Supporting members through the CBN's recapitalisation programme, which raised minimum capital for national non-interest banks to ₦20 billion and regional non-interest banks to ₦10 billion by 31 March 2026.
Sukuk market development
Working with the DMO, SEC and NGX to broaden issuance beyond the sovereign into sub-national and corporate sukuk, and to deepen the secondary market.
Takaful framework
Supporting NAICOM's work — including with the Islamic Financial Services Board — to strengthen the legal, regulatory and supervisory framework for takaful.
Deposit insurance
Ensuring NDIC coverage and prudential ratios reflect how profit-sharing investment accounts actually behave.
“The revised CBN guidelines for non-interest finance instruments are a welcome development. They will bring efficiency to the industry and allow non-interest banks to be more assertive in their treasury operations.” Hassan Usman, pioneer President of NIFIAN
02 — Capacity building
Capacity building and training
You cannot run a ₦5.77 trillion industry on people who learned the job by accident.
The single hardest input to buy in Nigerian non-interest finance is a qualified person. A conventional credit analyst can be hired from twenty banks. A structured finance professional who can price an istisna construction facility, document it correctly, satisfy an Advisory Committee of Experts and account for it under AAOIFI standards cannot.
For most of the industry's history the answer was to send people abroad, or to hire from Malaysia and the Gulf. Neither scales.
NIFIAN's capacity building programme builds the domestic pipeline instead — training that starts from Nigerian regulation, Nigerian contract law and Nigerian customers.
Practitioner workshops
Short, technical sessions for member staff on contract structuring, Shariah audit, non-interest treasury operations, takaful underwriting and AAOIFI-aligned financial reporting.
Executive briefings
Sessions for boards and senior management on regulatory change, capital planning and Shariah governance obligations.
Certification pathways
Structured routes to recognised international qualifications in Islamic finance, delivered in Nigeria, with member institutions sponsoring candidates.
Academic partnership
Working with Nigerian universities and business schools to embed non-interest finance in mainstream finance curricula — so the pipeline starts before recruitment, not after it.
The design principle across all four is the same: teach the contract, not the concept. A banker who can recite the definition of mudarabah is of limited use. A banker who can structure one, document it, price it and defend it to an auditor is the industry's scarcest asset.
See the training calendar
03 — Public awareness
Public awareness and education
The biggest obstacle to non-interest finance in Nigeria is not regulation. It is that most Nigerians have never had it explained to them.
Ask a Nigerian professional what a non-interest bank is and you will usually get one of two answers: “a bank for Muslims,” or “a bank that gives free loans.” Both are wrong, and both cost the industry customers.
The first excludes millions of people who would benefit from the products. The second sets an expectation the industry can never meet — and when it is not met, the disappointment attaches to the whole sector.
Correcting this is slow, repetitive work. We do it through media engagement, campus programmes, market and cooperative outreach, chambers of commerce, and plain-language explainers that use naira, Nigerian examples and Nigerian regulation rather than translated Gulf material.
Myth versus fact
Hover or tap a card to turn it.
04 — Networking
Networking and collaboration
Competitors on Monday. Collaborators on Tuesday.
Our members compete for the same customers. They also share a liquidity problem, a talent shortage, a standards gap and a public understanding deficit — and none of those get solved by competing harder.
NIFIAN provides the neutral ground. Chief executives meet at Executive Committee level; the substantive work happens in technical working groups where the people who actually do the job — treasurers, Shariah auditors, product heads, compliance officers — solve problems together.
Collaboration also runs outward. Non-interest finance in Nigeria has a great deal to gain from the fintech sector, which has already solved distribution problems the banks are still working on.
Annual industry conference
The sector's set-piece gathering, bringing members together with regulators, international bodies and investors.
Technical working groups
Standing groups on Regulatory & Policy, Shariah Governance, Liquidity & Product Development, Capacity Building, and Public Awareness.
Webinar series
Public sessions on themes such as “Transformational Development through Non-Interest Finance,” open beyond the membership.
05 — Research
Research and market intelligence
You cannot argue for an industry you cannot measure.
When NIFIAN asks the Central Bank for a new instrument, or asks the Federal Inland Revenue Service for a tax clarification, the request lands or fails on the quality of the evidence attached to it.
That is why research is a pillar rather than a support function. NIFIAN consolidates industry data that is otherwise scattered across regulator returns, annual reports, rating agency notes and DMO records — and publishes it.
Research also protects the industry from its own enthusiasm. Non-interest finance has grown quickly enough to attract claims that will not survive scrutiny. NIFIAN's position is that the real numbers are impressive enough — and that an industry asking Nigerians to trust a new financial model cannot afford to be caught inflating them.
06 — Standards
Shariah governance and standards
A contract must mean the same thing in Kano as it does in Lagos — and the same thing in Lagos as it does in Kuala Lumpur.
NIFIAN does not issue Shariah rulings. That authority belongs to each institution's Advisory Committee of Experts, and nationally to the CBN's Financial Regulation Advisory Council of Experts.
What NIFIAN does is help the industry converge — on documentation, on disclosure, on audit methodology, and on how contracts are described to customers. Convergence is what makes a market investable. It is also what protects customers, because inconsistent structures are where mis-selling begins.
The contracts, in plain language
| Contract | What it is | Typical use in Nigeria |
|---|---|---|
| Murabaha | Cost-plus sale. The institution buys an asset and resells it to the customer at a disclosed mark-up, payable in instalments. | Vehicle finance, asset finance, trade and inventory finance |
| Ijara | Lease. The institution owns the asset and leases it to the customer, sometimes with transfer of ownership at the end. | Equipment finance, property, vehicle leasing |
| Mudarabah | Profit-sharing partnership. One party provides capital, the other expertise; profits are shared by agreement, losses fall on the capital provider. | Investment and profit-sharing deposit accounts |
| Musharakah | Joint venture. Both parties contribute capital and share profit and loss in proportion to their stake. | Project finance, home co-ownership, SME partnership finance |
| Wakala | Agency. One party acts as agent for another for an agreed fee. | Treasury operations, investment management, takaful fund management |
| Salam | Advance purchase. Full payment now for goods delivered later. | Agricultural finance — paying a farmer at planting for delivery at harvest |
| Istisna | Manufacture or construction contract. Payment in stages against a specification. | Construction, infrastructure, project finance |
| Sukuk | Asset-backed investment certificates representing ownership of an underlying asset and its income. | Sovereign infrastructure finance, corporate funding |
| Takaful | Mutual protection. Participants contribute to a shared pool; claims are paid from it and surplus returns to participants. | Motor, engineering, group schemes, credit and mortgage protection, family plans |
In focus
Finance for the people conventional banking never reached.
Financial inclusion in Nigeria is usually framed as a distribution problem: build more agents, issue more accounts, extend more network coverage. That framing works for most of the excluded population. It does not work for all of it.
There is a substantial group of Nigerians — concentrated in the North West and North East, disproportionately rural, disproportionately farmers and traders — for whom the barrier is not access but acceptability. They have looked at what conventional banking offers and declined it.
For that group, a new agent network changes nothing. A product they can actually use changes everything.
Where the work goes next
Agriculture
Salam and istisna structures matched to planting and harvest cycles rather than to calendar quarters.
MSMEs
The segment repeatedly identified as holding the sector's real growth opportunity.
Women's participation
Products designed around the household and enterprise realities of women traders and farmers.
Digital distribution
Fintech partnerships that put non-interest products on the phone of a customer 200km from the nearest branch.
Every naira our members deploy has to be attached to something you could photograph.
FAQ
Common questions
NIFIAN runs six programmes on behalf of its members: regulatory advocacy with the CBN, SEC, NAICOM and DMO; professional training and certification support; public awareness campaigns; industry networking and technical working groups; market research and data publication; and Shariah governance and standards harmonisation.
Selected NIFIAN programmes — including the public webinar series and awareness sessions — are open beyond the membership. Practitioner workshops, executive briefings and certification support are member benefits. Individual Associate membership gives professionals access to the training calendar.
Through technical submissions, consultation responses, working papers and continuous engagement with regulators. NIFIAN's work with the Central Bank of Nigeria on Shariah-compliant liquidity instruments — including a non-interest master repurchase agreement, non-interest asset-backed securities and non-interest notes — is an example of the association converting an industry problem into a regulatory solution.
An Advisory Committee of Experts sits inside a single institution and rules on that institution's products. NIFIAN sits above the industry and has no ruling authority. Its standards work aims at consistency of documentation and disclosure between institutions, not at religious adjudication.
It serves people who are excluded by choice rather than by access — adults who find interest-based products unacceptable. With exclusion at 47% in the North West and 38% in the North East as at 2023, Shariah-compliant savings, microfinance, agricultural finance and family takaful products address a segment that conventional distribution expansion alone does not reach.
Work with us.
Whether you are a licensed institution seeking membership, a regulator seeking industry input, a university seeking a curriculum partner or a journalist seeking data — the Secretariat is the door.