Clad in a designer suit, 100% leather shoes with a blackberry phone. The upscale, new breed Nigerian bank owner CEO is always seen on the streets of Victoria Island, behind a luxury 4 –wheel automobile. Chauffeur driven, vociferating orders on phone. Most of his weekends are occupied. He dresses like a politician, attending marriages and/or burial ceremonies, baby dedication and birthdays of his top political customers and acquaintances that he helps “clean” stolen government money.

Money keeps running into his personal accounts worldwide, at the detriment of the bank he claimed to have established. He leaches on his so called financial empire. The recent concluded public offer for his bank shares was just a charade. He and his cronies set up dummy companies and dummy individuals who mop up substantial shares of the bank in order to give him a clear controlling ownership. The shares were bought using the bank money. Money never changed hands. He connived to push his bank share price by over 400% before the last public offer, just to deceive innocent Nigerians and also to rake in more money.

Those beautifully painted, glass wrapped buildings that house the over 100 branches of his bank are not owned by the bank. The mainframe /core banking software by which the bank runs are not own by the bank. The flashy cars with the logos of the bank are also not owned by the bank either. The staffs you see in banking halls with IDs of the bank are not the bank staff. They are contract-staffs, employed by his dummy company. Even the bank domain name as registered on the internet, is owned by him. What do the bank then own? The answer is nothing!. We have even been told by the regulatory body that the profits declared are fictitious and that our shares certificates in some of these banks are like “pieces of paper”, that is, worth nothing.

The Bank owner CEO is richer than the bank he works for. He owns controlling shares, even though it is a PLC company. He vetoes power at the board level. He uses the bank money to build branches in his name and leases these branches back to the bank. He is the real owner of those building that house his branches. Even the high-rise head office building is owned by him. The bank pays him rent. He uses the bank money to buy the core banking software that runs the bank. But lease this back to the bank which pays him fees every year. The best business to run in Nigeria is a profitable bank. The second best business to run is an unprofitable bank.

The recent 10-year limit for Bank CEOS is a welcome development from the CBN. But much needs to be done. Banks should be mandated to own physical assets by which they operates overtime, especially when those assets impinges on their core performance. For the CBN reforms to be truly applause by the Nigerian people, it should protect the money spend by innocent Nigerians in acquiring shares in these banks via their various IPOs. The CBN should not only protect depositors’ monies, but also monies injected into these bank by innocent Nigerians during the “rogue” public offers of these banks. After all, there was no effective regulatory oversight from the CBN. If the banks taken over by the CBN, are to be liquidated, I propose that the CBN should refund money expended by small investors during these Banks’ public offers for up to N500,000. This will empower small individual investors who are now holding empty bags. After all about N620b has so far been spent on these banks via new CBN reform package, and still no clear cut direction.