Category: Editorial

• This is the only choice open to the Federal Government now that the apex court has declared that its currency redesign did not follow due process.

For a judgment that was as concise as it was unambiguous, we would have thought that the Supreme Court judgment on the controversial and needlessly disruptive demonetisation policy would have settled things once and for all. But here we are – some 10 days after – with a Federal Government expected to uphold the law, treating both the judgment and the distraught citizenry with utmost contempt.

Surely, nothing in the March 3 judgment of the apex court could be said to be lacking in clarity. In fact, it was as lucid as it could be. President Muhammadu Buhari was held to be in breach of the constitution in the manner with which he issued directives on the re-designing of the Naira by the Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN); secondly, that he acted ultra vires by his glaring failure to consult with the National Council of State, Federal Executive Council (FEC) and the National Economic Council, (NEC), and, thirdly, that to the extent that the purport of the policy, initially advertised as ‘currency swap’ became more of ‘currency seizure’, breached the fundamental rights of the Nigerian citizens.

More crucially, the apex court issued the consequential order that the old naira notes remain valid until December 31, 2023, and that the old N200, N500 and N1000 will co-exist with the new ones.

That the Federal Government continues to carry on, as if oblivious of this unambiguous judgement, and as if unconcerned with the daily agonies that citizens have had to endure in the past two months as a consequence of its obnoxious policy beggars belief. Even more so is its silence, which is utterly deplorable and outright irresponsible. The same obviously apply to the CBN at whose behest a most avoidable anarchy is foisted on a hapless citizenry in the first instance.

That both the CBN and its principal, the Federal Government, opted to keep mum in the aftermath of the judgment is not entirely surprising; what is intolerable is when they allow their indignation to trump the well-considered intervention of the highest court in the land. Suffice to say that the country remains one of law and so players are expected to bow to its majesty. And this is even more so now that the correlates of criminal abdication and bad faith are increasingly manifest; with the programmed anarchy threatening to bring the financial services sector as indeed the economy into ruin.

This is manifest everywhere. There are reports of banks paying customers with the old notes only to have the latter return them soon after when it became evident that no one was ready to accept them. Ironically, the same banks said to have paid out the old notes were said to have rejected them on their return. Meanwhile, the new currency notes, despite the initial assurances of the apex bank, remain a rarity and where found, are more often than not, outside of the banking halls and at a premium. As for the scenes at the banking halls, they are better imagined: angry, frustrated customers laying siege all in the bid to collect the cash that belongs to them. To cap it all, the so-called alternative payment channels that ought to have provided some respite have remained as they were: neither up to speed, nor could cope in the face of heightened pressure. The whole system has simply buckled under to further compound the frustrations of the citizens. The impact on the economy is better imagined. From the market women selling fruits, to those hawking other perishables and other day to day items, theirs is a different level of woe occasioned by the currency scarcity. Over all, there is a creeping loss of faith in the financial services sector.

Part of the blame would go to the traders and others who have been rejecting the old notes, though. This is due to ignorance and perhaps the effects of long years of military rule. That is why they would think they need a presidential pronouncement on the Supreme Court judgment before accepting the old notes.

But the onus falls more on the Federal Government to clear the air by asking the people to accept both the old and new notes as legal tender, especially seeing the confusion its silence has created all over the country. This is why we welcome the idea by some state governments to initiate contempt proceedings against the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, and the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, over their refusal to implement the apex court’s judgment. This is the next thing to do now that the Federal Government has been served with the enrolled order and Certified True Copy of the Supreme Court judgment. People cannot continue to hide under the amorphous title of government to disobey court orders. Individuals are in charge of those sections of the government and these should be the ones to account for the government’s actions.

The Federal Government has no other choice but to comply with the Supreme Court judgment.  It must in practical terms give effect to the judgement. That is the civilised path to take. No matter its misgivings, the apex court remains the final arbiter in all legal disputes. Surely, any other route is an invitation to anarchy.

• UNICEF report as eye-opener of poor nutrition among Nigerians

Dire statistics just came from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).  It has to do with food and nutrition, the basic props of life and living.

On those critical twin-indices, UNICEF marked down Nigeria and 11 other countries: Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen.

For Nigeria, the stats are especially scary, with the dip in the nutritional health of teenage girls and young women, indicating an alarming gender imbalance in food and nutrition.

In 2021, 7.3 million Nigerian females: adolescent girls and women, within the age bracket of 15 and 49, were malnourished.  But the real alarm in the stats is the jump: the 7.3 million figure of 2021 flared from 5.6 million in 2018.

Now, to the health implications of poor nutrition, the outlook appears very dark and depressing: more than half (55%) of adolescent girls and young women suffer from anaemia, many of these cases a carry-over from inadequate nutrition of their mothers during pregnancy.

To underscore this imbalance, the 2022 National Food Consumption and Micronutrient Survey, which the UNICEF report quoted, revealed that nearly half of women of reproductive age seldom have access to diets matching their delicate state — at least five of the recommended 10: grains and tubers, pulses, nuts and seeds, dairy, meat, poultry and fish, eggs, dark green leafy vegetables and fruits, especially those rich in vitamin A.

This survey firmly establishes the critical link between food and nutrition, on one hand, and a healthy and vibrant population, on the other.  To be sure, this ought to be trite.  But this statistical link should galvanise the government, at all levels, to greatly improve the access to good nutrition by the people they govern.

Still, this food and nutrition crisis is a product of challenges across varied sectors — insecurity for one.  With the exception of Kenya, all of the countries mentioned in the UNICEF report are in some form of war or conflict: Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan.

The West African trio — Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali — with Chad are all fending off the scourge of Boko Haram and its terror cousin, Islamic State of West Africa (ISWA).  Ethiopia had always been a hot bed of trouble, even before the Ethiopia-Tigre war, on which a ceasefire was recently imposed.

Somalia has been bleeding badly from clannish strife, even if Somalia is a near mono-ethnic land, with the internationally unrecognised Somaliland pulling away.  Sudan and South Sudan fought decades of civil war, before the jubilant South Sudan fell upon themselves, shortly after independence.  A proxy war still rages in Yemen, with Arab and Persian powers trying one another for size.  Afghanistan, of course, has its heavy Taliban burden to bear.

The UNICEF report findings again reinforce the obvious: that girls and women are the first victims of wars and conflicts.  It just gives an added bonus: the graphic picture of how such wars impair females’ food and nutrition.  In times of conflict and scarcity, might is always right; and the weakest of the population hold the short end of the stick.

Still, the case of Kenya is strange.  Next to Nigeria and South Africa, Kenya is among the strongest economies in Africa.  It is certainly the strongest economy in East Africa.  With no security challenge like Nigeria’s, it really shouldn’t be in this bracket — except, of course, it bears the brunt of its less peaceful neighbours.

All over in the mentioned countries, there is the challenge of overall poverty, although unevenly spread all through their domestic regions.  In Nigeria, for instance, the South West is the most insulated from conflicts.  On the flip side are North East (Boko Haram), North West and parts of North Central (banditry) and South East (IPOB crisis).

In these troubled areas, poverty would grind harder — no thanks to sundry conflicts that disrupt economic activities.  Folks out there, particularly the dirt poor, would just eat any chaff to survive.  To them, good nutrition is luxury, with neither cash nor means to buy food!  So, the poverty question is another critical factor in the malnutrition crisis.

The Nigerian government has done well by its conditional cash transfer — N5, 000 monthly — to the poorest persons and families nationwide.  With this dire report on female malnutrition, the government should expand the scheme, and probably raise the stipend too.

Still, safety nets (noble and desirable) are only a short-term intervention.  They can’t be substitutes to an equal-opportunity vibrant and prosperous economy, in which everyone has fair returns for their sweat.

So, the foundation of poverty is a poor economy.  The in-coming government should, therefore, give the economy its due attention, just as the outgoing one has tried to lay the foundation, in harsh times, for a renewed Nigerian real sector, with its vast investments in infrastructure and agriculture.  If the economy is fixed, there would be less cases of undernourishment, other things being equal.

Still, it doesn’t mean that a richer citizenry and poor nutrition are two parallel lines that would never meet — no.

Indeed, while the Nigerian poor often resort to carbohydrate bulk with little or no matching protein (mighty mounds of eba, fufu, etc with little or no meat, poultry or fish), the well-off and the vain often indulge themselves with processed foods with suspect nutritional value.  Besides, some of these processed foods are sources of serious ailments like cancer, beside kidney and liver problems, many times associated with excessive indulgence in alcohol.

No wonder then, the UNICEF report pushed for safe and healthy nutrition; and warned against ultra-processed foods.  To check hazards of processed foods, it calls for marketing restrictions, compulsory front-of-pack labelling to warn the market of possible dangers.  The Nigerian government should adopt these suggestions.

The nutrition war would be long and hard.  The first target is access to basic food items by all.  But food is no food until it delivers nutrients that nourish and guarantee wellness and freedom from avoidable diseases.  Both are not a mission-impossible, if the government battles them with the requisite policies and mass enlightenment.  This UNICEF report should signal the fierce beginning of “hostilities” on that front.

• Regulators of medicine stores must redouble their efforts to check activities of fake drug sellers

A recent full length investigative feature article by The Punch newspaper on the operation of patent medicine stores, using Lagos and Ogun states as case studies, revealed widespread malpractices and legal infractions that constitute grave dangers to the lives and well being of millions of Nigerians. The survey, which covered about 15 outlets in the two states revealed that most of these micro pharmaceutical outfits, authorised by the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN) to sell only approved over- the-counter drugs, also routinely dispense fake and prohibited drugs to their clients.

That this practice is widespread across the country is indicated by the fact that between 2018 and 2022, the PCN claimed to have shut down the premises of over 19,000 patent medicine stores and mini pharmacies out of the more than 27, 000 of such facilities visited, to ensure compliance with the law in their operations. Of these, 1,780 operated illegally as pharmaceutical outlets and 16,502 were patent medicine stores that violated the relevant laws. It is not surprising that most of these patent medicine stores enjoy widespread patronage, particularly among people in the low economic cadre who cannot afford the cost of healthcare in standard, approved facilities, both in the public and private sectors. The more affluent members of the society are able to afford the prohibitive cost of medical care in private hospitals or travel abroad to treat even the most minor of ailments.

A prevalent practice among the operators of these patent medicine stores is that they readily sell prescription drugs over the counter without any prescription by qualified health professionals as required by law. Many of them do not display their licenses or evidence of registration within their premises as required by law. They also make available to their patrons sexual performance enhancing drugs, antibiotics, injections and other controlled drugs that cannot legally be dispensed without the approval of qualified persons. Most of the patrons of these patent medicine stores find them more easily accessible and affordable than standard health facilities.

Apart from the economic reason that compels the underprivileged to patronise these stores, they do not have to undergo the series of tests and other procedures that may be required in standard hospitals and clinics before getting their required drugs.

Beyond this, many of these patent medicine stores are widely believed to sell substandard, fake and expired drugs to their unsuspecting patrons. Indeed, some contend that there are more counterfeit than genuine drugs in circulation. This constitutes a grave danger to consumers of such drugs, as experts have ceaselessly warned that fake drugs invariably contain doses of harmful ingredients that cause mass poisoning. It has also been stressed that fake and substandard drugs can damage critical organs of the body, worsen disease progression as well as drug resistance and often fail to effectively and safely treat the diseases for which they are administered, sometimes resulting in preventable deaths.

It is not unreasonable to assume that large scale corruption involving some personnel of the regulatory agencies and the perpetrators of these crimes is a key factor responsible for the pervasiveness of this menace. Members of the public will recall with nostalgia the zeal with which the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) combatted the menace of fake and substandard drugs during the tenure of the late Dr Dora Akunyili as its director-general. She courageously stood up to the dealers in fake drugs in the face of alluring corrupt inducement and even threats to her life.

NAFDAC and other regulatory agencies in this sector have a duty to rise to their responsibilities and restore sanity in the operations of patent medicine stores as well as more seriously tackling the activities of the large scale and financially well-heeled importers of these substances who feed the patent stores. Where there is the necessary political will, this scourge can be tamed.

• We congratulate Bola Tinubu on his victory while noting the huge task ahead

The man has, in a few words, summed up his role in a new administration. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the president-elect, emerged the clear winner of a competitive contest in which three gladiators, and some would say four, went head-to-head for the plum prize of the first citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

In spite of the outcry of electoral malpractices, late turnout, BVAS glitches and slow performance in the relay of the results, Tinubu rose above his peers with an unassailable 1.8 million votes over the next rival, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) trots a distant third with about 2.6 million votes behind.

Tinubu said he will be a conductor of the Nigerian orchestra. In a nation of discordant voices and instruments, he promises to make a symphony out of the Nigerian babel. The riot of voices does not come out of the hundreds of ethnic groups and countervailing religions alone, but also from the pains many Nigerians feel over quite a few ailments eating into the Nigerian wellbeing.

They include the fear at home and on the highways, a nation in which many young are seeking fulfilment as an existential crisis drives them out of their native land for elusive paradise in strange places, the health crisis that makes many Nigerians seek salvation outside the country when they can afford it and waiting fatalistically for death when they cannot; the frustration of talent; power failure that leads often to economic paralysis with its spinoffs in layoffs, mass graduate unemployment; educational hurdles in which many parents strive often in vain to secure admissions abroad because schools at home not only fall short in standards but students cannot guarantee how many years they would spend in the university; a social castration in which values that pay often are values that will fail society always. The problems loom large.

Hence, Tinubu knows that the task ahead is immense. Nothing even demonstrates this task ahead more than the fury expressed by those who have lost the polls, and the rhetoric of division that privileges a breakdown of the polity over a culture of dialogue.

The PDP flagbearer and his Labour Party counterpart seemed to have found a dubious comfort in an alliance that also pits them against each other. They have each claimed that the elections were tampered with. This is their right to say and the courts also allow them in a democratic dispensation to assert such rights within the constitution.

But while they are at it, they should always remember to restrain their followers from overplaying their hands and taking the country to the brink. Since both party leaders have expressed their desire to follow due process, some of their followers have transmitted their bile online with effusive social media umbrage.

The Nigerian babel resounded across the various geo-political zones in the last presidential poll with the factors of religion and tribe often overshadowing the factor of unity, economic blueprint and templates to unite the country. Tribes and faiths hid in bubbles and enriched themselves in that disenchantment with the other.

Some voted tribes over faith, others faith over tribes, and quite a good number saw faith and tribe in their candidates.

The numbers from the polls substantially did not lie, but as a nation we lied to ourselves as a people in the name of tribe and faith. Tinubu understands this hence, in his acceptance speech, he extended the warm hands of fellowship. That is the first path to healing, and Nigeria needs healing.

Division is the first wound, and friendship is the first balm. That is what he has decided to do. We have a few months for that to effectively start, but he has started to do it in a series of rhetorical assertions, and it is the part of the whole nation to accept. The spread of his performance during the elections shows that he has a basis for this healing process. He won in the northwest, southwest and north central. He came second in the northeast and southeast. His showing was not hidebound, and so he can exploit the love for all. None of the other candidates was able to show such hefty numbers like him in a regional spread. We believe, given his performance in forging Lagos into a melting pot in spite of contrarian tendencies, he will succeed in his efforts on a national scale.

The question of security is also important. This has been prominent in the north and north central as it regards the issue of the bandit. In the southeast, the caterwauling and the blasts of gunmen and the separatist hysteria require a lot of wisdom and statecraft. If we need the right weaponry and diplomacy, we also need to dig down the economic and emotional content of this discontent. As many voices noted in the course of the campaigns, Lagos State remains a tower of peace throughout the past decades. In fact, in the past four years, the state hardly witnessed a bank robbery. It is indeed a testament to a security architecture, Tinubu pioneered, and set the country going along that line with the establishment of a security trust fund, though not so well prosecuted in Abuja. We expect that he can bring that mollifying vision to the benefit of our diverse nation.

Again, we must admit that one of the big tasks he would pursue is handling the fuel subsidy that looms as a big issue in the early months of his administration. We expect that the subsidies will go, and it will test his mettle in navigating compassion and policy. His credit vision and promise to revitalise tertiary education point to how performance can also help in a nation in dire need of healing and prosperity. We congratulate Asiwaju Tinubu, while hoping that his will be a truly transformational era for a country aching for a leader.

• Ministries and other government bodies can do with less cash withdrawal for their operations

We agree, at least in principle, with the philosophy behind the guidelines  barring governors, ministers, foreign missions and other public servants from making cash withdrawals from public accounts. But we disagree with the procedure. The policy came into effect on March 1. Banks have already notified their customers of the new directive and urged them to use digital channels for all transactions. This is a good idea, especially in our kind of country where governments and these agencies deal in cash, irrespective of the amounts involved.

We are happy to note that Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning; Budget Office of the Federation and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had keyed into the system by significantly reducing cash withdrawals even before March 1.

The policy is in line with the agreement among about 167 countries that have hooked up to the Egmont Secured Web (ESW) protocol with the aim of sharing information on governors flagged for money laundering because cash withdrawals by the governments and the agencies are now treated as money laundering.

The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) which activated the ESW protocol told the financial institutions in a circular dated January 4, 2023, to stop cash withdrawal in Naira and foreign currencies from public accounts at all levels. The policy also affects foreign missions operating in Nigeria, all development partner institutions, mutual and investment funds.

The NFIU circular said: “Cash withdrawals from public accounts would be treated as a money laundering offence.” It warned governors against flouting the directive as such governors would be automatically flagged for the 167 countries to see. The policy affects also affects payment of estacodes and overseas allowances to civil and public servants in cash as well as the local government’s N500,000 cash withdrawal limit for public accounts and instituted funds.

According to the NFIU, any ministry or agency that must use cash for any transaction must obtain permission from the president. “In the unlikely event that a public official feels he may need cash withdrawal, he may apply for approval for a waiver from the Presidency which may be granted on a case-by-case basis” and that “under no circumstance shall any category of public officers be given a standing or continuous waiver to withdraw cash from any public account in any financial institution or designated non-financial institution.”

“The President will only consider requests for cash withdrawals from public accounts on issues dealing with the border, defence, securities or medical.”

This is where we disagree.

We are supposed to be a federation, in which case the influence of the president on governors of the constituent parts should be minimal, almost ceremonial. We cannot at this stage of our development begin to envisage a situation where governors would be going cap-in-hand for such permission. No president should be given such powers in the hope that there won’t be abuses. “Power”, as they say, “corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Democratic experiment in the country is still work in progress. All presidents cannot be expected to behave in the same way. Some may decide to grant the request for cash withdrawals based on party affiliation. Others may simply wake up from the wrong side of the bed and their mood would decide whether to grant or refuse such requests. Yet, some of the requests that would be refused may be urgent or even life-threatening. The country may thus be saddled with a situation where some presidents would become demi-gods with the citizens bearing the brunt of such presidential excesses or indiscretion.

It is for these reasons that we disagree with the involvement of the president in granting the needed approvals.

So, much as we agree that the idea of discouraging cash withdrawals is good and welcome in principle to check the rate at which cash was being taken out of public accounts “without recourse to the money laundering laws and sometimes for corrupt purposes”, we believe that there should rather be a regulatory body to consider such approvals on a case-by-case basis. The body should not even be accountable to the president. It should be constituted probably by the National Assembly and must file returns of its activities regularly to ensure fairness and transparency.

The idea of the president granting the approval for requests to withdraw cash by ministries end agencies, etc. may work elsewhere, probably because of their level of political development or because they have strong institutions, we cannot boast of same here.

• Arrested suspects should be well interrogated and prosecuted alongside their masters

One of the big issues in the just concluded presidential and federal legislative assembly elections was the concern for vote buying. Many Nigerians accepted the harsh currency redesign policy of the Federal Government when it was touted as a measure to curb that electoral offence. The security agencies were also primed to forestall or deal with any case of vote buying. In Lagos and Port Harcourt, some persons were arrested with huge sums of money allegedly for vote buying.

In the Lagos incident, the Head of Media and Publicity of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Wilson Uwujaren, announced that a man with N32.4 million naira was intercepted. He said the commission was determined to deter vote trading and other financial malfeasance during elections. Also, the commission has established telephone hotlines and tactical teams across the states to check financial inducement at elections.

The police in Port Harcourt arrested a serving member of the House of Representatives, Dr Chinyere Igwe, with $498,100, allegedly for buying votes for the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

We condemn selling or buying of votes, and urge that any person caught doing that be dealt with according to the law. Section 127 of the 2022 Electoral Act provides: “A person who – (a) corruptly by his or herself or by any other person at any time after the date of an election has been announced, directly or indirectly gives or provides or pays money to or for any person for the purpose of corruptly influencing that person or any other person to vote or refrain from voting at such election, or on account of such person or any other person having voted or refrained from voting at such elections; or (b) being a voter, corruptly accepts or takes money or any other inducement during any of the period stated in paragraph (a), commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of N100,000 or imprisonment for a term of 12 months or both.”

We look forward to the prosecution of those arrested and others who may engage in electoral offences in the forthcoming gubernatorial and state legislative elections. No doubt, vote selling and buying distort the result of elections, and every legitimate effort should be made to eradicate the monster.

We commend the security agencies who took proactive steps to forestall vote buying in our elections, and hope that Nigerians have learnt necessary lessons from the reported incidents.

We also note that Nigerians suffered untold hardship as a result of the currency redesign. It is strange that despite the scarcity of the new currency, the person arrested in Lagos had N32.4 million of the scarce new notes in his possession. We urge the security agencies to investigate the source of the new notes, even as they pursue the offences against the Electoral Act and Money Laundering laws.

Nigerians would want to know from which source the money was procured. If it was through the banks, Nigerians would want to know if any laws were broken, and which banks were involved. The claims and counter-claims by the Central Bank and the commercial banks with respect to the release of the scarce new currency could get evidential support from the results of investigating the apprehended culprit with the new naira notes.

The judgement of the Supreme Court overruling President Muhammadu Buhari and the Central Bank on the demonetisation policy should not eschew a thorough investigation of the incident as it relates to the currency redesign imbroglio. Also, the emergence of a new government should not stop the furtherance of all genuine efforts to curb vote buying.

• Like the previous one, the new tenures for bank executives will not entirely address corporate governance abuses in the institutions.

Nigerians would ordinarily have welcomed the directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) vide its circular dated February 24, imposing new tenure limits on executive management and non-executive directors of banks and financial institutions in the country, save the need for further clarification. The tenure limits, said to be part of measures aimed at strengthening governance practices in the banking industry pegs the tenure of executive directors (EDs), deputy managing directors (DMDs) and managing directors (MDs), at 10 years.

According to the circular: “Where an executive who is a DMD becomes the MD/CEO of a bank or any other DMB before the end of his/her maximum tenure, the cumulative tenure of such executive shall not exceed twelve (12) years.

“However, for an executive (ED) who becomes a DMD of a bank or any other DMB, his/her cumulative tenure as ED and DMD shall not exceed 10 years.”

“Non-executive directors (NEDs), with the exception of independent non-executive directors (INEDs), shall serve for a maximum period of 12 years in a bank, broken into three terms of four years each.

“EDs, DMDs and MDs who exit from the board of a bank either upon or prior to the expiration of his/her maximum tenure, shall serve out a cooling-off period of one year before being eligible for appointment as a NED to the board of directors”.

In all, the executives can only serve a cumulative tenure of 20 years across the banking industry.

To the apex bank, the measures would help strengthen the governance structures of the institutions, while creating a systemised pathway for promoting and retaining talents in the industry.

Surely, only the undiscerning would fail to see the façade for what it is. In 2010, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as CBN governor had initiated a similar measure to address what he proclaimed as “corporate governance issues”.

“All CEOs who would have served for 10 years by July 31, 2010 shall cease to function in that capacity and shall hand over to their successors,” the apex bank boss had pronounced at the time.

Twelve-years-plus on, nothing could be said to have changed in practical terms. For instance, Tony Elumelu retired from the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc in 2010 only to come back in August 2014 as the bank’s chairperson. Ditto Jim Ovia; he left Zenith Bank Plc in July 2010 and returned as the bank’s chairperson on July 16, 2014. Segun Agbaje, the erstwhile helmsman of Guaranty Trust Bank (GBT) retired on July 15, 2021 and immediately became the holding company’s (holdco’s) chief executive officer (CEO) in the same month, the same manner that Herbert Wigwe of Access Bank Plc (until May 2022), became the chief executive officer of the bank’s parent holding company and has remained the chairperson of Access Bank, United Kingdom (UK) since 2008.

To the extent that these corporate chieftains have not only remained permanent fixtures in their respective banks but are still firmly entrenched under the new-fangled structure of ‘holding companies’ of the entities which they also created, the question of whether or not the directives are a nullity is not even moot.

We deplore the situation whereby a few individuals would entrench themselves in the banks, becoming demi-gods, more or less, and understand the apex bank’s acknowledgment that this is bad for the financial sector. It is just like some of our political officers who, after tasting the fruits of political offices, do not want to leave the system till death do them part. Thus, you have a situation where someone steps down as governor after eight years, moves to the senate and from there becomes minister or an ambassador, etc. This recycling has not been helpful in the banks as it has not in the political system. The problem with the new CBN directives is whether they are far-reaching to address the issue of corporate governance in the banks.

Surely, for us, it is hard to see any real changes coming in the aftermath of the new tenure rule. What we do know is that the 10-year rule that applies to bank managing directors still does not extend to bank chairpersons. Or, is the CBN saying that the matter of the relationship between a holdco and a bank (operating entity) and the boards of directors does not matter? Isn’t that, in practical terms, conveniently side-stepping the weightier issue of corporate governance advertised by the apex bank as underlying the issue of tenure?