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The fall of five bank chief executives from Olympian heights last Friday was not totally unexpected. But if one was to go by information in most Nigerian newspapers and magazines - and some relatively unknown foreign publications - nothing was wrong with our banks.

The weakness of the banks was not only hidden by the absolute lack of capacity to report the financial sector effectively but by the largely incestuous relationship between them and the media. What with the plethora of awards from the media that appeared to be in competition to outdo one another in giving awards to some of the indicted CEOs and the institutions they used to head.

The ones that stick out like a sore thumb are the THISDAY awards instituted by the newspaper and the Nigerian Bankers Award regularly hosted by Vanguard newspapers. There were also awards by The Banker, a publication of the Financial Times of London, African Investors magazine and Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc. These were complemented by a group of gangster financial journalists that routinely blackmailed and threatened some of these bank executives to do their bidding in return for regular spiking of damning articles.

After some of these nebulous awards, the banks would take up advert pages to proclaim them in, (wait for it) the same newspapers/magazines that gave the awards. In some instances, billboards and large outdoor adverts featured the citation of the awards and the banks' websites too. Sometimes, the awards were foisted on the chief executives who would proudly mention them in their personal websites and those of their banks.

[B]Award list[/B]

On Oceanic website, the bank states, "For the umpteenth time, leading African regional bank, Oceanic Bank International Plc, has again won the keenly contested 2008 best bank in Nigeria. This time from the EMEA Finance, the UK based financial intelligence magazine covering Europe, Middle East and Africa." The bank was also named 2007 Bank of the Year, the second time in a row by The Banker, a subsidiary of the Financial Times of London. The site claims that the magazine is "an internationally recognised and acclaimed organisation involved in providing coverage and analysis of banking and banks - an authoritative source of global financial intelligence since 1926." Oceanic Bank's former CEO, Cecilia Ibru, was named African Business Woman of the year 2006 by African Investors Magazine, while THISDAY awarded the bank Most Improved Bank Award in 2007.

Intercontinental Bank was voted Most Improved Bank by THISDAY in 2005, the Bank of the Year 2008 by The Banker magazine, African Bank of the Year 2008 by the African Banker magazine, most corporate socially responsible bank in Nigeria for 2007 and 2008 by Vanguard Newspaper.

Again, The Banker magazine gave Bank of the Year award to Union Bank between 2001 and 2003 just as the director of Euromoney Institutional Investor, Simon Brady, presented a certificate to its sacked chief executive, Barth Ebong, as the Best Bank in Nigeria for 2006.

The CBN hammer, in a way, also questions the rationale behind the ranking given by many of the international rating agencies. "Aa", "AA", "A1+" and the entire gamut of other notations most certainly do not mean anything again as some of these banks were rated to have "very high credit quality," "short term liquidity is outstanding," and "a financial institution of very good financial condition and strong capacity to meet its obligations as and when the fall due." But now we know better.

Surely, a section of the media is culpable in this long game of deceit.

234 NEXT has become the mouthpiece of its promoters. Why is it that the newspaper never writes anything bad about First Bank, its main financier and Lamido Sanusi?