Society Gists

The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri, on Thursday, stormed Lagos with 80 operatives, who are to go after the sacked management teams of three of the five banks that failed the recent Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) stress test and the debtors to all the five banks.

Waziri, according to the commission’s spokesperson, Mr. Femi Babafemi, is leading the operation which would be a replica of the one launched against the sacked bank chiefs and debtors to the five banks that had their leadership sacked by the apex bank in the first round of audit conducted in the sector.

The first five banks are Oceanic Bank, Intercontinental Bank, FinBank, Afribank and Union Bank, while the last five include Bank PHB, Spring Bank, Unity Bank, Equatorial Trust Bank and Wema Bank.

Only Wema and Unity Banks’ management teams were spared. At about 5.00 p.m. on Thursday, Nigerian Tribune gathered that Waziri was still holding the final meeting with the operatives before unleashing them on the sacked bank chiefs and the high-profile Nigerians that owe non-performing loans to the last five troubled banks.

The list of non-performing loan debtors released by the CBN contained names like Nigeria’s Ambassador to South Africa, General Buba Marwa; scion of the late M.K.O Abiola’s dynasty, Kola; the deported Vaswani brothers, billionaire businessmen, Femi Otedola and Aliko Dangote; Professor Pat Utomi; Chief Oyewole Fasawe; Chief Cletus Ibeto of Ibeto Cement, among others.

All the debtors to the five banks are said to owe non-performing loans of N451.6 billion. Debtors to the five banks earlier bailed out by the apex bank reportedly owed N737.6 billion.

The total non-performing loans owed the 10 troubled banks stand at N1.189.2 trillion. The EFCC said it had recovered N135 billion, leaving an outstanding of over N1 trillion.

It was learnt that the commission would be tougher on those on the new debtors’ list, given that many of them were also on the first list. Sources within the commission disclosed to the Nigerian Tribune that from Thursday night, the operatives would move in to arrest the sacked bank chiefs and the debtors.

Some of those on the first debtors’ list were detained by the commission before they paid up, while some had to use their property as a sign of commitment to pay up.

The commission, according to the sources, would be stricter with the recovery enforcement of the bad debts from those on the new list, which might see some of them facing prosecution alongside the sacked bank chiefs.

The 14 sacked bank chiefs that are being prosecuted by the anti-corruption commission were members of the sacked management teams of the first five audited banks.

It was gathered that the sacked chief executive officers of the three banks; Mr. Francis Atuche of BankPHB, Mr. Charles Ojo of Spring Bank and Mr. Ike Oraekwuotu of Equatorial Trust Bank, might be the first to be arrested in the fresh onslaught by the commission.

The commission had earlier launched an investigation into the allegations contained against them in the audit report, with sources within the commission revealing that they had cases to answer.

The commission had delayed the commencement of the operation till the list of the debtors was released by the apex bank. The list was released on Wednesday.

All the sacked bank chiefs had been put on security surveillance by the commission to forestall the possibility of their escape. In a related development, the Senate, on Thursday in Abuja, pledged its unflinching support to the efforts of the CBN governor, Mr. Sanusi Lamido and the chairman of the EFCC, Mrs. Waziri, at curbing corruption in the country.

The Senate also dismissed all the past efforts and energies deployed in the eradication of corruption, describing them as fake. The chairman, Senate Committee on Information and Media, Ayogu Eze, told newsmen, after both Sanusi and Waziri had appeared before the Senate at a closed door session “I want to report to you that having met with them behind closed doors and listened to them painstakingly about some of the discoveries they have made and about some of the methods deployed to achieve the results they have achieved, we are today speaking categorically that there is nothing that we have found in the method and in the process that is against the law.

“What the EFCC has done is correct and what the CBN governor has done is also right in the eyes of the law. We have resolved that the Senate will give them all the legislative backing and create all the legislative infrastructure necessary to battle corruption.”

Senator Eze added that efforts made in the past towards eradicating corruption in the country were self-serving, fake and of no effect. He said: “In spite of the fact that much lip service had been paid to the fight against corruption in the past, the effort of the present crop of people, who are fighting corruption, appears to have paid off more than any effort in the history of this country and the Senate is satisfied with this development.”

Consequently, he informed that “in one month, as I said before, a hundred and something billion naira has been recovered by the EFCC. In the past, we saw so much flash and dash, no conviction, no recovery. This is the first time we have seen real practical action of agencies of government moving all out.”

He added that “the CBN governor has assured us that, in spite of the fact that he has received pressures, petitions and entreaties from influential Nigerians to change the course of his investigations, he had refused to be derailed from the assignment he had set himself upon and we have also resolved to back him all the way.”“If you look at the papers today, he told us that he had published the names of some people who are major debtors in the banks, some of them influential people in the society; and many more are going to come and we have given him our backing and assurance that we are going to give him support, as he goes ahead to expose corruption in accordance with our powers under sections 88 and 89 of the Constitution. I think that the press should also join in supporting them to make sure that they deliver on this assignment.”

He stated further that “we heard of cases of individuals, I am not going to mention names, who walked into the bank under the ‘carry go’ atmosphere that prevailed, collected loans as high as N14 billion and no security whatsoever, except that this person is taking the money to go and trade in oil and that he was going to return the money in less than one week, not a single security was secured.

“There was another one of about N18 billion, no security; there are bank executives that have used depositors’ funds to buy two private jets and are placing orders for additional two and a lot of other things that are happening in the banking sector. So I believe that we are very committed to this fight and we will support them as they go ahead.”