The Nigerian bank is diseased; a contemptible ogre in the mould of the bubonic plague, or Black Death of 1348 if you like. Like the bubonic plague – which killed up to 40 per cent of Europe’s population – banking operation in the country presage our gruesome death as a republic and careworn economy. It foreshadows the traumatic realities that ruined Europe by devastating every aspect of civilisation and vestige of humanity. Boccacio describes the breakdown of law and government, the desertion of child by parent and husband by wife in the wake of the Black Death. A noble woman who fell ill was nursed by a male servant: “Nor did she have any scruples about showing him every part of her body as freely as she would have displayed it to a woman…; and this explains why those women who recovered were possibly less chaste in the period that followed,” notes Boccacio. The Black Death apparently wore human will and weakened social controls. It had a glacial effect, pushing some toward debauchery and others, like the flagellants, towards religiosity.
Like the Black Death, Nigerian banks are out for the kill. However, unlike the bubonic plague that afflicted both rich and poor, nobleman and commoner, Nigerian banks by their operations, choose to discriminate. Banks in the country are smitten by a mad lust to obliterate or destroy those segments of their customers and the citizenry that are classifiable as ‘commoners.’ Ask Tejumade Adeyemi. The latter cried helplessly, as her account with Union Bank got pilfered and drained of all her savings, on the bank’s watch. Adeyemi accuses Union Bank of complicity in the alleged illegal withdrawal of the sum of N251, 447 from her account with the Oba Akran, Ikeja branch of the bank. Still smarting from the vileness of the attack carried out on her account, Adeyemi threatened to take legal action against the bank if it refuses to refund her money but the bank has called her bluff.
Union Bank persists in misdemeanour riding on a wave of presumed invincibility and disdain for customers that probably fall outside its classification of deep-pockets. Union Bank has denied liability, blaming the victim for the fraud. According to the bank, Adeyemi’s savings got stolen because her account was used to make purchases online. Union Bank attributes the victim’s plight to possible compromise of her confidential card details.
Union Bank’s reluctance to admit culpability no doubt flies in the face of reason, in the estimation of the lawyer and his client. Why did the bank refuse to suspend further transactions on the account as instructed by Adeyemi? Was it such a hard order to carry out?
Consider too, the on-going fraud perpetrated by Nigerian banks in response to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s directive that they publish the names of chronic debtors in a “name-them-and-shame-them” exercise; several bank chiefs, afflicted by terror of what misery may come in the wake of their shady liaisons with chronic billionaire debtors by whose bidding they plunged the financial sector in its current mess, have resorted to desperate measures.
To protect themselves and their billionaire cohorts from shame and prosecution, bank chiefs in the country have severally scorned the CBN’s directive, publishing instead, fictitious lists of presumed chronic debtors in the media. There is no gainsaying the country’s bank chiefs are in cahoots with their billionaire friends and chronic debtors. And the reason is hardly far-fetched; many of the country’s bank chiefs are on the leash of the country’s so-called superrich or ‘billionaires.’ In exchange for various goodies and freebies ranging from exotic automobiles to posh apartments in exclusive gated communities; membership of exclusive clubs for the rich and admittance into periodic orgies and other guilty pleasure fests, Nigerian bank chiefs facilitated the acquisition of several multibillion naira non-performing loans (NPLs) to the detriment of the financial sector and the country’s economy.
Consequently, banks in the country have been plunged in a financial crisis that has them contending with the scariest surge in bad loans since 2011. Economic pundits warn that the trend suggests banks in the country will eclipse the CBN’s minimum non-performing loan (NPL) ratio target of five percent at the backdrop of random fears that the NPL ratio could increase to seven per cent by the end of 2015. Another desperate tactic adopted by the banks is to arbitrarily increase the interest rate on lending by its struggling, less privileged customers. For instance, a customer whose loan attracted an interest rate of 22 per cent at the time it was taken, is currently paying 25 per cent interest on the loan in the wake of his banker’s arbitrary hike in interest rate. Many banks afflict their helpless, loyal customers with such ridiculous charges in desperate bid to raise money and make up for losses suffered by bad and non-performing loans they had granted their billionaire friends.
The decision to publish the names of serial bank debtors was taken at the 322nd meeting of the Bankers’ Committee in July. The conference set a deadline of August 1, for every bank to publish the names of its chronic debtors but the bank chiefs rather than comply with the directive, are collaborating with the culprits to avoiding repayment of the loans.
Tokunbo Martins, CBN’s Director of Banking Supervision, claimed the measure is in response to mounting non-performing loans, which he said had risen to N490 billion sector-wide. The deteriorating macro – environment indicate that some loans may go sour for lenders. The uncertain macro – economic environment may lead to a rise in credit losses for banks in 2015, according to Standard and Poor’s analysis. Banks’ reduced profitability will consequently, lead to rapid loan growth in sectors where risks are not fully understood, including small and midsize enterprises.
Banking operations in the country, like the plague of 1348, certainly works in reverse; giving birth to a renaissance of poverty and ill bliss, by destroying the middle and lower classes to perpetuate the epoch of the Nigerian billionaire. This epoch of the contemporary billionaire is forged in the crucible of Nigeria’s equivalent of the Black Death.
The poor and the working class in the country know what it is to be afflicted by an equivalent of the Black Death. They what it is to be financially handicapped. They understand what it means to be so endangered. They know underemployment and unemployment. They know what it is to live through each day without dependable livelihood. They know life without pension. They know existence on a few naira a day. They know getting their kids kicked out of school because of unpaid tuition. They know the crippling weight of debt. They know being sick and unable to afford medical care. They know the profound despair and abandonment that come when schools, libraries, neighborhood health clinics, day care services, roads, bridges, public buildings and assistance programs are neglected or closed. They know the financial elites’ hijacking democratic institutions to impose widespread misery in the name of austerity. They, like the unfortunate Europeans of 1348, know what it is to be afflicted.
And they, not the rogue billionaires and banks, should inform the bedrock of humane and progressive palliatives proffered by the CBN and President Muhammadu Buhari to the country’s financial crisis.
