Favour Ozioma Ogbodo
Economists have urged the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Yemi Cardoso, to ensure that the apex holds strategic consultations between stakeholders before it introduces recapitalisation to them in order to avoid mistakes made in the 2015 process.
Cardoso had on Friday said that the CBN will be directing banks to increase their capital at the 60th anniversary of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) in Lagos State.
Reacting to his statement, the founder of the Centre for Promotion of Private Enterprise, Muda Yusuf and Prof Segun Ajibola of Babcock University, Ogun State, while speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily Programme on Monday, said though recapitalisation by banks has become inevitable, it must be done in such a way that the merger and the acquisition won’t cause unemployment in the banking system.
“What we had in 2005 was very unfortunate. Banks should not be stampeded,” Yusuf said, urging CBN to give commercial banks a year or two for systemic migration.
On his part, Ajibola called for strategic consultations between stakeholders for the process to be fluid and successful, saying the CBN should not force banks into unholy alliances.
In 2005, the current Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo, as the governor of the apex bank, superintended a process where banks raised their capital from N2bn to N25bn, with more than 80 banks collapsing into about 30 in an unprecedented season of mergers and acquisitions, with attendant job losses.
