It’s jail, not NAMA, for Nigerian bankers over debts

IN Africa everything bites, especially when it comes to measures dealing with the tycoon terrorists who have crippled Nigeria’s banks.

Instead of a highly bureaucratic NAMA-type approach to its financial woes, the Nigerian central bank has applied the wisdom of a popular local saying – “one goat cannot carry another’s tail”.

Some of the country’s richest businesspeople and bankers, among a central bank hit list of 200, have been told to clear their debts or go to jail.

Already, as this country continues its political shadow-boxing against the toxic asset threat, the central bank of Nigeria has had 11 bank executives and five prominent managing directors arrested, all of whom are believed to have played a villainous role which culminated in a €1.84bn bailout of the main banks.

The named and shamed list of more than 200companies, individuals and state bodies includes scores of stockbrokers and local oil and gas firms, as well as conglomerates Transcorp and Dangote Industries and fuel distributors African Petroleum and Oando Plc.

The names listed as directors and shareholders in some of the defaulting firm read like a roll-call of Nigeria’s corporate aristocracy. The list includes two of the country’s best known tycoons, Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola – the only Nigerians on the latest Forbes billionaires list, worth $2.5bn and $1.2bn respectively.

Referring to the debtors’ list, the bank stated: “It has become necessary to use this medium to request the following defaulting customers of the affected banks to pay without further delay their indebtedness, failing which the banks will take all appropriate legal actions to ensure repayment.”

Last week, the central bank of Nigeria injected €1.84bn into Afribank, Finbank, Intercontinental Bank, Oceanic Bank and Union Bank and sackedall their chief executives.

The banks had notched up bad loans totalling €5.38bn and the regulator said lax governance had left them so weakly capitalised they posed a threat to the banking system in sub-Saharan Africa’s second biggest economy.