A Reaction to Tunde Fagbenle on His view on Sanusi Lamido (III) by Iroabuchi Onwuka

By
Iroabuchi Onwuka



These Lebanese and others also played a pivotal hand in Investment Banks in Nigeria though private placement in the Nigerian stock market, but their real strength was the commercial where they supervised the inflationary curve price of building and real estate. There were others, especially from the far side of country and from the North. But the success of the older Nigerian banks was a product of military era, an era that fed on to many Investment banks, many of them entirely reliant on Nigerian federal grants and contract with few scattered businesses. When the military disappeared, these banks in their many numbers also disappeared. There was also the issue of insolvency, mainly comatose by non performing debt which accumulated in dues by inflationary pressure.

The main thing is that nothing was working aside the business of small administrations, and only a certain investment type could have supported these Investment banks. They rose so quickly and fail just as fast, with people losing much of their money. The commercial banks such as First Banks and other older Banks held out the hopes of other businesses and served as protections for buffer tycoons roving in and out of federal account. In those years of the 90’s Nigerian banking society began to evolve into a different dragon. As much Banks rose and failed, there was a newer group of Nigerians, but this time with an the edge of securities placement, with insurance which ones the home make of bigger banks, with newer avenues for merchant banking, with credit amortization and association, with the degrees of leases not unlike the commercial banks and where offering credit advisory and futures trading in all respect of investment management.

These new banks acquired the rent prolepsis of micro financing and experimented with credit technology available in the US. It was these groups that began to chart the contours of Nigerian business, and began to underwrite for small business almost as the big guys. But their small unit in several outfits helped these Investment banks to aggregate overtime gainer from Market Nigeria, though largely commercial but experimenting with quickly experimenting with size and the forms of businesses involving everyday bank in Nigeria. The case of banks rising and falling and the case of people doing business through foreign exchange and parallel market made it easier for alternative to exist. It also made it easier for smaller banks to also fail. Commercial banks were digging too deep into the country and they had little competition. Commercial banks became the mother laden of many areas of Nigerian economy as smaller ones failed.

The advert of Obasanjo as President did not change the status quo, in fact he even deepened the vast resources of these bigger banks in Nigeria, who by market estimate where several in number.

Obasanjo’s privatization scheme enabled some survival of these smaller banks, but the rise of National debt to 30 billion and clear absence of sovereign wealth and zero foreign reserve led to the appointment of Prof Charlse Soludo. When he arrived at the office as CBN Chair, it was clear to the business world that business of Nigerian banking and the stock market would likely change. His idea of bringing several small banks together was to ensure they were reasonably fitted to compete and that there were too big to fail. What the effort however did was break the power of the old dominating banks and many of collision began to offer just as much credibility as the older ones. This began a certain kind of race, not unlike Lehman and company in US and in Europe, but a race that almost naturally spike up price, where bankers went out of their way to look for customers even it mean treading on deposits that they were too thin. The bust was a natural consequence of that era, but more than anything, it brought down the inner walls of First Bank and their older groups in Nigerian Banking industry. Those who led the new and Nigerian revolution in Banking were small business administrators who in the era past struggled against the tide. There was also Nigerian made Tycoons who were willing and able to stake their profit on Nigerian banks, the era of new banking cleared the sea of bad obstacles and at once proved an upfront to older.

The helm of that First Bank who is the head of one these big families was a man by name Lamido Sanusi.