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

By

Sampson Onwuka Iroabuchi

First Bank had begun to falter in terms of organizational dynamics in around 2006. And that led to the exit of the top chiefs of the banks in matter of years. The man who was voted in January of 2009 from the glossary of risk managers and analyst to head First Bank was Lamido Sanusi. Lamido Sanusi is credited with toning down the rhetoric at First Bank and he is credited to have pushed the agenda of reform. But it is also said that more than anyone, he had problems of corporation with members outside his risk group.

It is wrong to enable the rest of us to judge Mr. Sanusi from the standpoint of these intervening years as risk manager of his former employer, before becoming the head of First bank from around the early months of 2009. It is wrong to cast enough aspersions on Sanusi from his performance and performances at First Bank in those declining years since the problem was worldwide. For that, we move to understand Sanusi from his role as a banker and his role as a CBN Chair. In many ways, the thematic difference between Sanusi the banker and risk manager and Sanusi the CBN Chair is to be understood if we are likely to form the right estimate of the man in question.

First it can be noted that Sanusi’s action at First Bank is mainly nominal given the outcome of the challenges the bank was facing in terms of risk management. First Bank as at April 2008 was already shrouded in complacency, already a lilac within the hue of commercial banking and already showing signs of decay from many years of bad management. First Bank was for many years the only bank that held its ground against many buffeting of Nigerian economic society. The problem of being so pivotal in any economy is that you are as the banker become, the pivotal litmus paper for testing and guaging the range of motion in your local economy. In one sense, you are likely to bear the loses of whatever happens to your local economy and it noting lifespan.

The issue of life-span of risk and portfolio management also applies, for it seems that when a Plateau is achieved in any money market graph without original input, the only way forward was essentially downwards. In terms of precaution the case is salvage but in terms of risk, we might began to suspect the inevitable when the market is seriously kinetic, in perpectual motion. In many ways, both graphs offer signals for hedge and defense, perhaps a haircut. But most banks who naturally get a haircut from many years of active success, do bounce back from fo rms of insolvency. So Plateau is dependency driven on meet of any event in the economy