Sufuyan Ojeifo and Kunle Aderinokun
10 July 2009
Abuja — Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking and Finance, Senator Nkechi Nwaogu, yesterdaay said over N188 billion of depositors' funds trapped in failed banks four years ago are yet to be paid to the beneficiaries.
Nwaogu, who made this known yesterday in Abuja at the West Africa Regional Conference on Smart and Appropriate Technologies for Rural Commu-nities, said it was sad that bank directors and other influential people that contributed to the collapse of the affected banks, by borrowing through the back door, now have new portfolios and are living in opulence, while ordinary customers of such banks are living in penury.
She said: "If you notice the figure in question, the people we are talking of now are the former directors and managing directors and chairmen board of directors of those banks that failed. We are not talking about people who borrowed money from the banks in the cause of their doing business. No! And we are saying that it is not fair for these directors, including insiders privileges, to borrow so much money for one thing or the other and at the end of the day these banks died and they died with customers' money.
Can we now ask over 60 percent of the population who do not have bank accounts to go and have bank accounts and blame them for putting their money under their pillow cases? "Then, will it be nice when they put their money at the end of the day these banks go underground deliberately or not deliberately and they are not paid their deposits. Four years down the line and the people who borrowed through the back doors are unable to pay. What the Senate is saying is that we must begin to be our brothers' keepers. We must sanitise. We are talking of rebranding, we must rebrand from within, we rebrand from ourselves. And some of these people or board members are now real big men with new portfolio. Is it right?"
Given this scenario, Nwaogu called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) to pay the depositors to assuage their sufferings because the aggrieved had been bombarding the National Assembly with petitions.
But Chairman, Doyin Group of Companies, Prince Samuel Adedoyin, had stated that the City Express Bank which he chaired was no longer owing any depositor, saying , rather , he was the one being owed for overpaying depositors by over N400 million.
Adedoyin, in a statement made available to THISDAY, was reacting to reports published in some national dailies yesterday that the Senate Committee that looked into the depositors' fund with the failed banks indicted him and City Express Bank which he chaired.
Adedoyin said he was particularly disturbed by the reports because, according to him, he "went the extra mile to ensure that City Express Bank owes no one anything after it was declared unfit to remain in operation."
Adedoyin, who appealed to President Umaru Yar'Adua to urge restraint on the path of the Senate "so that the innocent is not punished unjustly by such malicious and wicked report," added that " My fervent hope is that someone is not trying to score a cheap political point by including my name, that of my company and that of Funke in the report."
Adedoyin had also said in his statement: "The indictment, by a committee chaired by Senator Nkechi Nwaogu, is a very disturbing development to me as an industrialist who has contributed in no small measure to the development of the industrial sector of the country.
"City Express Bank is no longer owing any depositor. Rather, I am the one who is being owed for overpaying depositors by over N400 million. The case is already in court in order to enable me recover the excess I paid to the depositors. I had to sell part of my estate in Abuja to pay the depositors when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ruled that City Express Bank was not solid enough to continue in business by a yardstick that is still unclear to me and a lot of people.
"In the said report, it was imputed that my estate in Abuja, Peniel Estate, took a loan from City Express Bank. This is indeed untrue and very embarrassing. So also did the said report indict my daughter, Funke Adedoyin, a former Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, for having taken loans from City Express Bank. This is indeed untrue as Funke never did so. I wonder when and how she got the loan that is not in the records of the bank. Except, of course, one has been doctored."
Nwaogu has however said that her committee was not witch-hunting former directors of the 13 failed banks who were named on Senate floor on Tuesday.In response to the declassification of his name among the insider credit abusers, Senator Chris Adighije (2003-2007) had accused Nwaogu of playing bad politics. Nwaogu defeated Adighije in the Abia Central Senatorial District election in 2007. The Court of Appeal recently order a retrial of the election petition which the lower tribunal had ruled in favour of Nwaogu.
"We don't have any political motive at all. The Senate mandated us to investigate the plight of Nigerian depositors of failed banks and the NDIC supplied the relevant information, we have no business to doubt the credibility of (NDIC)," she said.
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