The head of Nigeria's stock exchange on Monday denied being among debtors owing banks billions of dollars, the latest high-profile business figure to join a showdown with the country's new central bank governor. The regulator last week published a list of firms and individuals, including some of Nigeria's most powerful tycoons, whom it said owed 747 billion naira ($5 billion) to five banks bailed out to prevent a systemic banking crisis.
Anti-corruption police have declared the former heads of two of the banks - Cecilia Ibru and Erastus Akingbola from Oceanic Bank and Intercontinental Bank - wanted in connection with fraud, insider trading and money laundering. The stand-off between new central bank governor Lamido Sanusi and some of the biggest names in corporate Nigeria has made front-page headlines for days as Nigerians wait to see whether figures long considered untouchable will face prosecution.
"I unequivocally state that I do not owe any Nigerian or foreign bank," Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, the director-general of the bourse, said in a full-page advert in the ThisDay newspaper. Okereke-Onyiuke was included on the list of debtors because of her position as chairman of Transcorp, a conglomerate which the regulator said was one of the biggest defaulters to both Oceanic and Intercontinental.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria's anti-corruption police, took out its own full-page advert in the same newspaper entitled "Notice to Bank Debtors", repeating a one-week deadline for defaulters to pay up. "Debtors have seven days with effect from Weds August 19 to make necessary payments failing which the commission will have no other choice but to exercise its powers under the law to recover the funds," it said. It said it had powers to "trace, freeze, confiscate or seize" proceeds from "financial crime related offences".
The central bank injected $2.6 billion into Intercontinental Bank, Oceanic Bank, Afribank, Finbank and Union Bank on August 14 and sacked their senior management, saying lax governance had left them so weakly capitalised that they posed a systemic risk. The EFCC has been interrogating those executives it has managed to track down but on Sunday declared Ibru and Akingbola wanted after they failed to show up for questioning.
Akingbola has launched a legal challenge to his removal and demanded 50 billion naira ($333 million) in damages, according to court papers. A hearing is due on August 28 ThisDay reported on Saturday that Ibru was also seeking 50 billion naira in damages.
Integrated Oil and Gas Ltd placed a second full-page advert opposite Okereke-Onyiuke's, denying it had a 2 billion naira non-performing loan with Intercontinental Bank. Aliko Dangote, one of only two Nigerians on the latest Forbes billionaires list, as well as energy firm Oando have also denied holding non-performing loans.
If successful, the challenges could be a serious setback for Sanusi's efforts to sanitise the banking system, whose lack of transparency has long been a major disincentive to investors. Sanusi took over at the helm of the regulator just two months ago after building a strong reputation for corporate governance and risk management as head of First Bank. Bankers say his insider knowledge, built over more than two decades in the Nigerian industry, means he knows exactly where the skeletons in the sector's closet lie.
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