Three weeks ago, I discussed in this column the catastrophe that the banking system has imposed on Nigeria’s economy. The article was curiously tagged “The sins of banks”.
Two weeks after the article was published, two prominent Nigerians who know the banking system like their palms made public statements that vindicated my article on the “sins” of banks.
Ola Olukayode, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was the first to speak on the despicable role of the banking system in Nigeria’s economic calamities.
The EFCC chairman lamented that banks are responsible for 70 per cent of the financial crimes in Nigeria.
He listed the crimes of banks to include something as demeaning as collaborating with cyber criminals to hack into individual accounts in the banking system.
People were still discussing the shocking expose by the EFCC chairman when another authority with insider knowledge of Nigeria’s banking system opened up on the sins of Nigerian banks. This time, the complainant who does not want his name in print is a member of the investigative committee set up by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to dig into the catastrophic tenure of Godwin Emefiele as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The man who published his long essay in Times Forum, a social medium set up by former staff of the Daily Times, lamented that the crime of Nigerian politicians pale into insignificance when compared to that of bank executives. He blamed the crimes of Nigerian bank executives for the abject poverty, hunger and starvation plaguing Nigeria today.
The assertions of the two men are incontrovertible because of their backgrounds.
The chairman of EFCC investigates all financial crimes in Nigeria; so he knows what he is talking about.
The member of the investigative committee set up by the president to probe the CBN worked with Emefiele in a merchant bank before leaving for other banking firms. He knows the industry like his palm and is speaking from a position of strength rather than bias.
He extensively discussed what is now known as the banking industry equivalent of a tilapia, a small fish weighing about three kilogrammes, swallowing a whale weighing several tons. The strange phenomenon is what catapulted Access Bank to Nigeria’s banking apex.
Nigeria’s banking system is sick from head to toe. CBN, the regulator that the presidential panel investigated, is allegedly as corrupt as the operators being regulated by the apex bank.
The veteran banker in the CBN investigative panel wondered why CBN sold Intercontinental Bank to Access which was les than 10 per cent of the bank it bought at give-away price.
The most troubling part of the sale is that two directors of Access Bank raised N16 billion as loans from Intercontinental to recapitalise Access Bank.
The loan that saved Access from collapse during the banking reforms was one of the bad loans that caused the collapse of Intercontinental Bank.
The share price of Intercontinental in the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) during the crisis was N7 while that of Access was N1.
Ironically, the bank with the N1 share price bought the bank with share price listed by the NSE at N7.
Pundits wonder why the member of the presidential investigative committee on CBN maintained a deafening silence on the alleged fraudulent sale of Intercontinental Bank.
Perhaps, billions of naira in minority shareholders’ funds that perished with the alleged fraudulent sale could have been saved if someone had dared to speak out in time.
That deafening silence on the sins of banks is what is killing Nigeria’s economy today.
After telling Nigerians that banks are responsible for 70 per cent of the financial crimes in Nigeria, EFCC is expected to list the number of bankers it has prosecuted for their catastrophic sabotage of the country’s economy.
The truth is that corruption kills Nigeria because those responsible for 70 per cent of the crimes are treated as people enjoying unwritten immunity.
If someone buys a stolen car from an armed robber and the police catch the robber, when he leads the police to the buyer of the stolen car, the buyer shares the same fate with the robber.
It is not like that with crimes in the banking industry. Lawless bankers enjoy strange immunity. EFCC is still drilling Halima Shehu, the woman who “mistakenly” transferred N44 billion from government account to private accounts.
The question in everyone’s lip is: “Where is the bank official who transferred the money? The bank official could not have committed the alleged heinous crime free of charge. The minimum he would have collected for the alleged illegal transfer is N2 billion.
Banking rule on customers’ account is so strict that if someone mistakenly transfers money into the wrong account, the bank cannot return the money to the right owner without the mandate of the owner of the account.
If the rule is so strict, why do bank executives transfer government’s money into private accounts with impunity? Why does EFCC not prosecute bank officials who help government officials to steal government money?
Abdulrasheed Maina paid more than N1 billion stolen from pension fund into two major banks. The banks helped him to open fictitious accounts in his siblings’ names without the consent of the supposed account holders. None of the bank officials was prosecuted.
We are all happy that EFCC has noticed the rot in Nigeria’s banking system. The presidential committee that investigated the CBN has equally established that the regulator was as corrupt as the operator.
What is left now is to let the bank executives who facilitated the merciless looting of the treasury face the wrath of the law.
The looting of government treasury would reduce drastically when the bank executives who facilitate the looting are prosecuted and sent to jail.
Banks executives are responsible for the failure of President Tinubu’s laudable exchange rate unification policy. They hoard forex and sell to the highest bidders. Just one bank made N244 billion from forex transactions in 2023. That is why the naira trades officially at N1,560 to the dollar.
