| Urhobo Historical Society |
GARLANDS FOR THE VANGUARD NEWSPAPERS
(On Their Reports and Opinions on
the
Debacle at the Central Bank of Nigeria)
By Dr. Kola Afolabi
Lagos
Was Mallam Sanusi
Lamido Sanusi
being
altruistic when he let the sledge hammer fall on five targeted banks?
Was he being patriotic when he injected N420 billion into the five
banks to
prevent them from failing and causing catastrophic consequences for the
nation's economy, shareholders and depositors? Or was he pursuing a
personal
vendetta and a group agenda when he sacked the five chief executives
who were
his colleagues up to June 2009 with so much
disdain and
gusto in a generalissimo style? For a man who is an alumnus of the
famous King.s College, Lagos, where young
Nigerian students are
raised not to be tribalistic and myopic in
handling
national assignments, it was easy to want to believe that Maliam
Sanusi could not have been motivated to act
the way
he did to wrest the banks from those who were alleged to be playing
ducks and
drakes with shareholders and depositors funds, besides his sense of
altruism.
That belief is bound to endure with anybody until one has access to the
March
23,d, 2009 Vanguard edition
which
revealed five months earlier all that Mallam
Lamido Sanusi
was to play out on
14th August 2009.
In
the aforementioned Vanguard publication scooped by Omoh Gabriel, the Business Editor of The
Vanguard, and
his colleague, Emeka Mamah,
the nation was alerted to some sinister moves by persons from a certain
part of
Nigeria, disgruntled with the outcome of the banking consolidation, who
were
bent on causing real upheaval in the banking sector to get even with
policies
of our immediate past President, Chief General Olusegun
Obansanjo. What did Omoh
Gabriel and Emeka Mamah
reveal? How accurate were they?
They
reported that:
· "Anti-consolidation
forces have regrouped with the hope of ...
and forcing a
takeover of top five banks in the country. How many banks did Mallam Sanusi take
over? Five
banks! After achieving the group's aim, is it any wonder that Sanusi was unashamedly judgmental that he did
not expect
any major surprises in the remaining 14 banks that were yet to be
audited?
Indeed, the chairman of one of the banks yet to be audited played the
cheer
leader in London during Sanusi's road
show. How
tactless and unethical can we get?
· The
grand plan by the group is to cause panic and uncertainty in the
banking
industry and make the target banks look unsafe for depositors"
Was
such panic and uncertainty caused? Information now in the public domain
confirms unequivocally that the First Bank where Mallam
Sanusi held sway as Managing Director had a
field day
de-marketing selected banks, leading to panic withdrawals by customers ofthose banks.De -
marketing is a
heinous, diabolical and unethical marketing practice, a fact which Mallam Sanusi
admitted in his
circular to his staff!
· The
aim of the anti -
consolidation forces is to cause
loss of public confidence in the banking industry and compel the
Federal
Government to move in by injecting funds. Furthermore, they ultimately
plan to
instigate government to take equity holdings in the targeted banks.
Mallam
Sanusi,
barely two months in the saddle as the Governor of the Central Bank, as
predicted by The Vanguard, moved in by injecting funds into
the five
targeted banks with the ultimate plan to take equity holdings in the
five
banks. It is also now known that an exercise had been conducted in July
to pre
- select investors that would ultimately be used to re- enter the
banking
industry from the back door, explaining why the CBN Governor held a
private
session with investors at the end of his recent London road show! Mahmoud Lai Alabi,
the current MD
of Intercontinental Bank, confirmed Sanusi's
new
investors' goal when he was reported to have said, "whenever it is
necessary that we can have credible investors in
Intercontinental Bank,
I'll not shy away from completing the process as early as possible" The
CBN advertorial of September 10, 2009 also confirmed that the Governor
explained the actions of CBN to foreign investors and
correspondent
banks. So, why the subterfuge that he does not have the sale of the
banks in
his agenda? If he cedes the ownership of the banks to foreign
investors, is
that not tantamount to the sale of the banks to them? CBN semantics
cannot pull
the wool over people's eyes.
· Part
of the plans hatched by the group is to ensure that the incumbent
Governor of
the Central Bank, Professor Chukuma
Saluda, does not
get a second term. The
group was resoundingly successful in this part of their plan
as Professor Soludo did not get a second
term,
notwithstanding the President's view that Professor Soludo's
tenure would "remain sources of inspiration to an entire
generation." Elsewhere, someone with Professor Soludo's
gargantuan antecedents would be the toast of many governments of
different
political persuasions:
· The
plan is also to
ensure that whatever gains consolidation recorded are
discredited. it is evident that
literally all the
actions of Mallam Sanusi
and his cheer leader have been geared towards discrediting the gains of
consolidation.
· Part
of the game is to spread rumours that some
banks are
unsound and are on the verge of collapse. They send out text messages
to
individuals and account holders passing wrong information on their
targeted
banks. At the moment, the group's target is one of the highflying new
generation banks where they have sent out several messages. Akingbola's
deposition in the court, now in public
domain, succinctly confirms that First Bank under Mallam
Sanusi's watch was caught with its hands in
the till,
with Mallam Sanusi
asserting in a circular that he had warned his staff to desist from
such
unethical behaviour. A report in the media
also
confirms that Professor Soludo had
"mediated and
advised that they resolve their differences. Sanusi
visited Akingbola in the office to make
peace but was
kept waiting endlessly." It is evident that Mallam
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had a personal axe to grind with Dr. Akingbola before he became the Governor of
Central Bank. No
wonder Akingbola had to scurry away for
safety!
Intercontinental
Bank was certainly a highly visible, flying new
generation bank and the unethical, de-marketing tactics of First Bank
literally
brought the bank to its knees, necessitating Soludo's
CBN's intervention which saved the day. Mr. Alabi,
the new helmsman at the bank, had this to say recently about the bank: " ... it is a good bank. One, it has a
strong
brand, which is aggressively promoted. Two, it has dedicated and highly
committed staff Three, its spread is NATIONAL (emphasis mine) and the
brand
acceptability all over the country is unbelievable. Four, it has solid
dedicated products targeted at key market segments and it is obvious
that these
products have strong market acceptability. "
• The Arewa
Consultative Forum(ACF) has expressed
concern over what it described as
the rapidly
deteriorating liquidity situation in the banking industry and tasked
the
Central Bank to
make public information on causes of the development
as well as the scale of the crisis. Did they have inside
informers? Mallam Sanusi
confirms in the
aforesaid interview with The Punch as
follows, "I have had a
meeting with northerners even before I became governor. When they said
they had
the Bank of the North and that after consolidation, they lost it I said
you
never had Bank of the North", implying that Mallam
Sanusi had been cohorting
with his fellow northerners over their complaint that they had lost
their Bank
of the North to consolidation. The Managing Director of Unity Bank, Mallam Falalu
Bello, had also
been reported as presenting a paper titled "Nigeria: One Country,
Four
Economies" sometime in 2008 in which he unabashedly accused the
South
West and South East Regions of the country of "controlling 94% of the
country's banking assets, 88% of insurance assets and 90% of the
industrial
assets and is home to the three deep sea ports of Apapa,
Tin Can Island and Roro." Taken together
it is
evident that the northerners were deeply concerned over their relative
inaction
in the economy and were determined to seize the heights of the economy
by
whatever means, fair or foul. So, was Mallam
Sanusi pursuing a group agenda? No wonder
the Norhern Caucus in the House of
Representatives are backing "Hurricane
Sanusi" 100 per cent!
· Mallam
Sanusi
Lamido Sanusi
was being
touted among five northerners as the prospective governor o/the CBN.
The
Kano Prince turned out to be the President's blue - eyed boy! Vanguard's
prediction
was again correct.
· It
is unfortunate that top five banks are the target. The banks ...
are
sound.
Mallam
Sanusi himself corroborates the soundness
of the five banks
when he said in an interview he granted The Punch and repeated
in the
August publication of the Federal Ministry of Information and
Communication Open
Government publication, "that these banks are safe. What we
have
done is to take actions to make sure that the banks are safer." If
the
banks are safe, why did Malam Sanusi
rush pell-mell to inject N420 billion which the banks' Treasurers, as
reported
in The Vanguard, now say they didn't actually need as much?
Why could Sanusi not take the pains to
analyze the nature of
the so called non-performing loans? Would he not have found out that
the worst
culprits of the so-called non-performing loans are his masters? Fasehun, the OPC leader asserted, and no one has
contradicted him, thalt the Federal
Government is
owing the five banks N3.2 trillion! If the Federal Government honoured its obligations effectively, would all
the hues
and cries have been necessary? Was Sanusi
being
driven by his inordinate desire to deliver promptly the outcomes
expected by
the group?
The
Vanguard in
its well considered editorial titled "Kill Economy, Save Banks" our
attention was drawn to the havoc being wrecked on the economy
by the most unfortunate hasty actions of the CBN Governor, Mallam
Sanusi. The outcry has been deafening,
coming from
all segments of the economy: Chairman of the Economic Summit Group, Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa;
Group
Political Editor of The Guardian, Akpo Esajere; a Professor of Finance with the
University of
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; Fasehun,
Founder and President of Oodu'a People's
Conference (OPC);
Advertising Agencies; Estate Valuers;
Shareholders'
Associations; Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria, Credit
crunch in
the inter-bank market, Foreign banks, etc; The Vanguard certainly
deserves
our garlands for its incredible investigative journalism that exposed
five
months in advance the terrible and evil plans of those who have a
penchant for
forcibly seizing what belongs to others and destroying them.
The
intellectual myopia exhibited by the CBN in the handling of
the contrived illiquidity of the banks is simply
astonishing! When Governor Francis Sanusi
(the Sanusi before the coming of Soludo)
edged out the chairman of one of the five banks, now given a clean bill
of
health by the Mallam Lamido
Sanusi (remember that he was the Risk
Manager at the
bank), for unethical conduct, no one felt the whimper of his actions.
When
Professor Soludo eased out some tin gods
of some
private banks, it was achieved without any perturbations to the
economy. So,
why couldn't the Prince of Kano resort to such subtle and adroit moves?
Why the
grandstanding? Why was it necessary to hug the klieg lights when
handling such
a highly sensitive matter that would hurt the economic arteries of the
nation?
We recommend that Mallam Sanusi
should read the" Mischievous Dog" in Aesop & the CEO so
that next time he can follow due process whenever he wishes to use his
enormous
powers of sacking bank executives. We now run the grave risk of
destroying
through our military leadership style our macroeconomic reputation
which the
Global Economic Forum recently lauded as the nation's key strength,
ranking
Nigeria in the 20th position out of 134 nations on this
factor of
global competition. Why destroy the edifice so well put together by
Prof. Chukuma Soludo
and Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo
Iweala?
Mallam
Sanusi made mountain out of the use of
extensive resort to
the "Expanded Discount Window" in his televised outing as a
major reason for sacking the five executives of the banks and injecting
the
whopping N420 billion into the banks. In a recently paid advert placed
in many
newspapers the CBN asserted that, "The CBN Act empowers the CBN to
manage
money supply in the economy through different mechanisms. The CBN, as
banker to
other banks, has been increasing money supply by lending money to the
banks
through the Expanded Discount Window (EDW) and the injection of the
N420
billion into the five banks is SIMILAR ( Emphasis mine) to that
function. " SO WHY DID SANUSI
DELIBERATELY CLOSE THE
EDW IF IT IS SIMILAR TO THE FUND INJECTION?? Who in Nigeria or
abroad had
bothered about the goings on in the EDW which his immediate predecessor
had
quietly and sensibly created to deal with the aftermaths of the global
meltdown? Ifthe funds withdrawn from the
EDW are loans, didn't they have repayment
terms and duration? Why
did Sanusi deliberately disrupt that
seamless
mechanism simply to achieve his goal of presenting the five TARGETED
banks as
distressed and ready for take over? If they were obtaining funds from
that
source, surely that must mean they were positioned to meet their
obligations to
their customers as and when due. There was no known case that any of
the five
banks was unable to discharge its obligations before Sanusi,
the best Risk Manager in Africa, decided to ambush the banks to take
them over.
Another
grave harm Mallam Sanusi
may unwittingly be sowing is the destruction of the
entrepreneurial spirit of Nigerians. Among the four founding fathers of
Intercontinental Bank -- ENUHA, ALABI, OBIERI and AKINGBOLA -- we have
an
entrepreneur par excellence. Engineer Enuha,
a 1974
University of Rochester first class Chemical engineer and an MSc Cornell University graduate has, with
exemplary
integrity, contributed most creditably to the progress and advancement
of
Nigeria in many ways. He has trained and inspired a whole generation of
Nigerian engineers who have distinguished and are still distinguishing
themselves in Shell, Mobil, Texaco and Elf Petroleum. His company which
he
founded at the youthful age of 27 with Mr. Chris Alabi
has become the Bechtel of Nigeria: the company has engineered,
constructed,
installed and commissioned petroleum products loading facilities for
OBAT
Petroleum, Petroleum loading depots, constructed fire water tanks, LPG
spheres
etc. Engineer Enuha, is one of the leading
voices of
local content development in the Oil and Gas Sector and has contributed
in no
small measure to the existence of the Organization of Design Engineers
of
Nigeria (OGDEN). Generous to a fault, he does not believe that life is
worthwhile unless it is lived for others. He, Alabi,
Obieri and Akingbola
have built
Intercontinental Bank over the past 20 years to the enviable state that
has
made it the first target of those who want to seize the economic purse
strings
of the nation.
It
is trite knowledge that any board of directors anywhere in the
world is as good as the materials management decides to tender before
it. Akingbola, as the chief executive
among the four of the
founding fathers from the inception of the bank bears the greatest
responsibility for the performance of the bank. It is doubtful that any
of these
gentlemen, particularly Akingbola who has
been in
banking all of his adult life, and whose middle name is Bankole,
would have knowingly and deliberately run their bank, which is one of
their
most important life investment, to the abyss as now asserted by Mallam Sanusi. Let
Mr. Akingbola evince courage by coming out
of hiding to face
his accusers and traducers to clear his name and enhance the release of
his
respectable colleagues from the EFCC Black Hole of Calcutta. Dr.
Raymond Obieri, Chief Samuel Adegbite
(who turned around Wema Bank and was an
astounding
CEO) Mr. Chris Alabi, Engineer Hyacinth Enuha, Chief Sanni
Adams, Alhaji Isyaka
Umar
(a Kano Prince), all senior citizens, do not at all deserve the
unfortunate
humiliation to which EFCC has subjected them to for the past weeks by
holding
them hostage because Dr. Akingbola
fled from
the battle field. They are some of the finest Nigerians this nation can
boast
of.
Signed:
Dr.
Kola Afolabi,
Medical
Director,
Ago
- Medical Centre
Okota,
lsolo
Lagos