₦airaland Forum

When Criticism Becomes a Verdict: A Rejoinder to Nkem on GTCO

There is a difference between holding a financial institution to account and putting it on trial without a balanced reading of the evidence.

After reading Nkem’s rather bitter epistle on GTCO, one is left wondering whether the writer set out to analyse the institution or had already reached a verdict before assembling the evidence.

The article reads less like a dispassionate examination of GTCO’s financial position and more like a prosecutorial brief in search of incriminating evidence.

That distinction matters.

Financial institutions should absolutely be scrutinised. Banks are custodians of public confidence, shareholders’ capital and, ultimately, an important part of the economic architecture of the country. But serious financial analysis demands something more sophisticated than taking one disappointing period, placing it under a microscope and then extrapolating from it to the entire future of an institution.

A single bad harvest does not prove that the farmer has forgotten how to cultivate the land.

Nkem’s decision to juxtapose GTCO with Fidelity Bank is particularly curious. If Fidelity is being presented as the benchmark against which GTCO should be judged, then intellectual consistency demands that the comparison be comprehensive rather than selective.

GTCO paid investors a final dividend of ₦11 per share for FY2025, while Fidelity Bank paid no final dividend for that financial year. The significance of this comparison should not be exaggerated, but neither should it be conveniently ignored when constructing an argument about relative performance.

And therein lies the problem with Nkem’s thesis: selective evidence can produce an impressive argument while simultaneously producing a misleading conclusion.

If Miriam Olusanya was at the helm of GTCO during the period in which the bank delivered that substantial dividend to shareholders, then it becomes difficult to construct a credible narrative in which her leadership is portrayed solely through the prism of whatever weaknesses Nkem identifies.

A chief executive cannot reasonably be credited with every favourable number and blamed personally for every unfavourable one.

That is not analysis.

That is advocacy.

The financial sector is neither a straight road nor a one-way street. Earnings fluctuate. Interest-rate environments change. Credit costs rise and fall. Regulatory requirements evolve. Foreign-exchange movements distort financial statements. Capital-market conditions change. Competitive pressures intensify.

Anyone analysing a major financial institution must therefore distinguish between temporary earnings pressure, structural deterioration and genuine institutional decline.

Those are three very different things.

To move from “GTCO had a disappointing period” to “GTCO is a falling financial institution” requires considerably more evidence than Nkem appears to have provided.

It requires a sustained deterioration in asset quality, capital adequacy, earnings power, liquidity, operating efficiency, franchise strength, shareholder returns and strategic execution—or compelling evidence of some other structural weakness.

Without such evidence, the conclusion becomes less an analytical finding and more a rhetorical flourish.

And rhetoric, however elegantly packaged, is not financial analysis.

The danger of the ethnic lens

There is another dimension of this debate that deserves caution.

Nigeria has spent far too many decades interpreting economic achievement through the prism of ethnicity. A Nigerian company should be allowed to succeed because it is well managed, efficiently capitalised and commercially competitive—not because it belongs to one ethnic group or another.

Likewise, criticism of a Nigerian company should be evaluated on its merits without automatically converting the critic into an enemy of an entire ethnic community.

GTCO belongs to its shareholders. Its customers, employees, investors and stakeholders are Nigerians and citizens of the wider global economy. Its performance should therefore be interrogated with the universal language of capital, governance, profitability, efficiency, risk management and shareholder value.

Ethnicity is a remarkably poor substitute for financial analysis.

If Nkem has legitimate concerns about GTCO or Miriam Olusanya, those concerns deserve to be tested against the financial statements, regulatory disclosures, corporate-governance record and measurable shareholder outcomes.

That is where the argument should live.

Not in insinuation.

Not in tribal arithmetic.

And certainly not in the politics of resentment.

GTCO does not need mythology; it needs measurement

GTCO does not need anyone to portray it as infallible. No serious institution is.

Nor does it need critics to pretend that every quarter will produce spectacular numbers.

What GTCO deserves—and what its shareholders deserve—is measurement without malice.

If the institution is deteriorating structurally, demonstrate it.

If its balance sheet is weakening, show the numbers.

If its capital position is becoming precarious, produce the evidence.

If its dividend capacity is unsustainable, explain why.

If management has made strategic errors, identify them and quantify their consequences.

If competitors are demonstrably outperforming it over a meaningful period, present the comparative data.

That is how serious criticism is made.

The man who says the roof is leaking should be able to point to the hole.

Simply shouting that the entire house is collapsing because one room has developed a leak is not prudence; it is exaggeration.

And this is precisely why Nkem’s conclusion deserves considerably more scrutiny than the confidence with which it was delivered.

The ultimate referee is performance

GTCO's future will not be determined by Nkem's article, nor by its defenders.

It will be determined by numbers.

By earnings.

By capital.

By asset quality.

By return on equity.

By efficiency.

By dividends.

By customer confidence.

By management execution.

And ultimately, by whether shareholders continue to receive adequate value for the capital entrusted to the institution.

That is the real courtroom.

The annual report is the evidence.

The market is the jury.

And time is the final judge.

Consequently, declaring GTCO a “falling financial institution” on the strength of a single period of weaker performance is not merely premature; it risks confusing a setback with a structural collapse.

History is littered with companies that experienced difficult periods and subsequently recovered. It is equally populated by institutions that appeared invincible immediately before their decline.

That is precisely why intellectual honesty requires neither blind praise nor premature condemnation.

Let the numbers speak

Nkem is entitled to her opinion. She is equally entitled to criticise GTCO, Miriam Olusanya or any other corporate institution.

But when criticism assumes the posture of certainty, the burden of evidence rises accordingly.

Extraordinary conclusions require extraordinary evidence.

GTCO should not be worshipped.

It should not be demonised either.

It should be measured.

And if the evidence eventually demonstrates that GTCO is losing its competitive advantage, weakening structurally or destroying shareholder value, then the numbers will expose it without requiring anyone to shout.

Conversely, if GTCO continues to demonstrate resilience, profitability, capital strength and meaningful shareholder returns, no newspaper column—however bitterly written—will be powerful enough to rewrite that reality.

In the end, facts do not need anger to become facts, and truth does not require tribal allegiance to remain true.

Nkem has written her verdict.

The more important question is whether the evidence supports it.

Because in banking, as in life, the loudest voice does not necessarily win the argument. The balance sheet does.

Mankind2024 is an Abuja based entrepreneur.

omoredia:
This ur epistle too sounds like GTCO has paid u to help them with damage control.

BarrElChapo:
GTCO as most Nigerian banks are anti customer, I really pity any person hyping up any bank, wait until your money mysteriously disappears and watch them do anything but help you

cluewebhost:
GTB customer here for over 20 years.
They've really fallen off in service delivery and quality.
I've stopped using my accounts with them for almost 2 years and I'm sure a lot of people have done the same.

omoredia:
This ur epistle too sounds like GTCO has paid u to help them with damage control.

olaric:
The tribal hatred towards GTBank dates way back to the issue it had with INOSON few years back. Go to Ladipo market, and you will not need anyone to tell you that Nkem's bitter writeup was borne out of tribal hatred towards GTBank.

badoh:
When I read the thread yesterday, I immediately concluded that It was a sponsored post to tarnish the image of GTCO or the GMD as the writer kept comparing GTCO performance with Fidelity Bank while leaving other banks, the ethnic colouration was too obvious during the comparison.

anonimi:
Neo-black Problem: Must Blacks Be Ruled by Whites in Order to Prosper?

In short, the neo-black dilemma may be framed as follows: is it better to live under white rule without political dignity but with basic life-sustaining standards for many;

or to live under black rule with illusory political dignity and without basic life- sustaining standards for the majority?
@
@
The path forward for Africa lies in cultivating higher and adequate levels of personal and communal agential integrity as well as full personal responsibility and productivity. Not to mention creativity (including epistemic creativity), productive justice (such as merit and freedom), harmony and reconciliation at local and international levels, and a proper domestication of capitalism and other related values and institutions.

Africa must stop wasting her time on dreams of socialism because it is a system of wealth distribution primarily. Whereas, capitalism is a system of wealth creation primarily, and wealth has to be produced before it can be distributed.

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2024/10/12/neo-black-problem-must-blacks-be-ruled-by-whites-in-order-to-prosper/

omoredia:
This ur epistle too sounds like GTCO has paid u to help them with damage control.

nuesmann:
Its a lie,Lots of us are still there

Mankind2024:
https://www.nairaland.com/8757486/h1-2026-report-gtbank-losing

cluewebhost:
GTB customer here for over 20 years.
They've really fallen off in service delivery and quality.
I've stopped using my accounts with them for almost 2 years and I'm sure a lot of people have done the same.

Aprocco:
GTCO is defending the indefensible.
People are talking steady decline in size and now profitability over the years and they are telling us about dividends.

Let GT compare the size and ratio of its Balance sheet, Assets, Profitability, even share capital with Tier one lenders in 2016 and 2025.

With this mindset, I see GT falling off Tier 1 within the next 2 years and I am a Yoruba man. Their Retail Strayegy Jig is up. The Moniepoints, Pays are a problem for them. They must evolve or die.

epainos:
If you were/are a real GTCO customer, you know the truth. Lol. No one needs to argue with you.

For you to be struggling explaining and re-explaining the situation says a lot about the bank. Lol. Once upon a time, you cannot even say such about the bank. Would you respond if it was said about Access or Zenith? Lol.

This article and responses from their defenders say it all. Lol.

Las las, customers have made up their minds. And new customers wont go to traditional banks, rather, they will go to the likes of Opay. Lol.

Your defence wont stop it from falling more. And if they decide to change and do better, it will show. And I am sure many will return. Many havent closed their accounts yet, just that there is no more money there, or very little there.

I dont have time for any bank to keep stressing me. A don port. So, enjoy yourself defending them. Collect your money for defending here in peace. Its gonna help with like max of 1 mth hustle.

Goodluck

Mankind2024:
"Because in banking, as in life, the loudest voice does not necessarily win the argument. The balance sheet does".