– MD pockets N1.8 billion severance pay
– Chairman corners N102 billion loan
– Another doles out N2.1 billion to brother for election
+ N1.2 trillion lost to toxic assets, N5 trillion wreckage uncovered, etc
A whole lot of dirty deals are going on in some of our banks – and that’s the truth. According to renowned journalist, Azu Ishiekwene, in an article entitled ‘Bank Cowboys, Ngige and Our Deposits’: ‘Between 2008 and 2009, the country was brought to its knees by financial recklessness in commercial banks, which left an estimated N1.2 trillion in toxic assets…’
Continuing, he said: ‘The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), which has said it is owed about N5 trillion, was created to manage the wreckage left behind mainly by the irresponsible banks…
‘It is in the open that almost N102 billion of bad loans are traceable to companies owned by the deposed Chairman of Skye Bank. And it’s not just a Skye Bank thing. Abuse is deep-rooted in the banking system and was particularly brazen and widespread before the government recalled nearly N3 trillion from commercial banks when the Treasury Single Account was introduced last year’.
The former Editor and Executive Director at The Punch, who is now the Publisher of The Interviewer magazine, then dropped the bombshell: ‘An insider told me of a top bank in the country which gave a company in the oil and gas sector a loan of about N400 billion, which has now gone bad. The huge toxic assets have been approved to be written off over four years against the bank’s profit by CBN, thus denying shareholders any dividend during the period.
‘As if that was not bad enough, when the Managing Director of this same company was retiring last year, he helped himself to a severance package of N1.8 billion…
‘But it gets worse. We have seen how banks were used as conduits in the 2015 general elections. In one particular case in the run up to the elections, the Chairman of one of the big banks helped his brother to a loan of N2.1 billion to bribe party chiefs for a governorship ticket. After shelling out N1.3 billion to party chiefs through the brother of a former Group Managing Director of the NNPC, the aspirant was denied the ticket. He had been conned and the money was gone!’
Mr. Ishiekwene also went further to query some of the obnoxious practices going on inside the banks. An example, according to him, is ‘when bank staff are compelled to use medical services provided by the wife of their Chairman at over one billion naira yearly, who can say the best process has been followed in selecting the service provider or complain when such staff are not getting proper treatment?’
Nigeria’s banking sector, it would be recalled, got back into the news again days back, following the exit of the Board of Skye Bank, then headed by Mr. Tunde Ayeni (Chairman) and Mr. Timothy Oguntayo (MD/CEO), by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Prior to that however, a few others banks like Oceanic, Intercontinental, Bank PHB and First Inland had collapsed – with their then Managing Directors – Cecilia Ibru, Erastus Akingbola, Francis Atuche and Okey Nwosu either still on trial or already convicted for running them aground. Before them was Societe Generale Bank, owned by the family of the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, among others. Now, that no-do-good wind is said to be blowing through the sector again, causing many to panic.