THE PERCEPTIONS OF NIGERIAN MUSLIM YOUTHS IN MALAYSIA ON THE ESTABLISHMENT AND OPERATION OF ISLAMIC BANKS IN NIGERIA
IBRAHIM Mohd Yussof, MUSTAFA Daud

Abstract
The emergence of Islamic finance like Islamic banking, Takaful, Islamic Capital Market (ICM) and a host of others are often related to the Islamization process in most Muslim countries. This is in line with the desires of Muslims to live all aspects of their life in accordance to the Shari’ah. In view of this, some Muslim countries like Pakistan and Iran have Islamic banks (IBs) as the mainstream financial institutions. In some other countries, Shari’ah-compliant financing (SCF) exists alongside conventional banking as the case in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Algeria among others. Unfortunately, Nigeria with a population of over 80 million Muslims is still struggling to establish one. However, the recent attempt by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) at enacting new provisions for Non-interest banking in the country has further regenerates the growing interest for the industry. Against this background, this study seeks to empirically assess the perceptions of Nigerian Muslim Youths in Malaysia on the establishment and operation of Islamic banks in Nigeria. This study focused only on three universities in Malaysia i.e. International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) and Kolej Universiti Insaniah (KUIN). Hence, the sample of the study was made up of 100 questionnaires, which recorded 85 percent response rate. Thereafter, the data collected were subjected to statistical analysis using the SPSS version 18.0. One-Sample and Independent-Samples t-Tests were adopted to analyse the data. The findings of the study revealed that the perceptions of the Nigerian Muslim youths in Malaysia are not significant in the establishment and operation of IBs in Nigeria. Importantly, the statistical behaviours of the two dimensional constructs i.e. Awareness and Challenges exhibited homoskedastic characteristics, which confirm that the findings are valid and reliable based on theoretical evidences.

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