“By doubting we come to question, and by questioning, we perceive the truth.”-(Peter Abelard, 1079-1142)
Perceptor has been rather hesitant to ask questions about the ongoing hurricane/tsunami/tornado (pick your own meteorological expression) sweeping through the banking industry because frankly, Perceptor is so baffled and confused by it all that it is almost as if the only questions that Perceptor can really ask are some stuttering “Wha..?”, “Ho...?”, “Whe...?”, “Who...?” that show how completely out of the whole thing Perceptor is. Perceptor doesn’t know whether to REJOICE that so many frauds are being unmasked; whether to RAGE at the gross abuses of human rights going on along with outright disobedience to court orders in this ‘rule of law’ government; whether to SYMPATHISE with the ‘oh-so-frail’ Mrs. Cecilia Ibru, Banker of the Year of so many years hobbling into the EFCC offices; whether to GASP at the shakara of people saying that they didn’t owe any bank any money “... and anyway, here’s the N3.5 billion you say I owe”; whether to join the crowds rushing to kick people when they are DOWN (well, actually, to do that, Perceptor would have had to be among those who had been praising, worshipping and running after them when they were UP, and Perceptor has never been good at sudden transitions from grovelling at feet to leaping for the jugular); whether to ADMIRE those who are ready to stand by their banker and debtor friends; whether to just SUSPECT EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY – hidden agenda, fake rich people, name it; or whether to just WEEP for Nigeria and for ordinary Nigerians because our so-called ELITE knows only about taking, taking and taking, and nothing about responsibility or duty.
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In an earlier blog, Perceptor had been commiserating with people who were sitting down jejely minding their own business before their banking officials came to ask them to borrow money so that they could buy shares in er, ... their bank. Those people not only had to face the fact that they had bought shares that were worth a lot less than the price at which they borrowed money to buy them, but that they also had to pay interest on the loans. Unlike those people who only used their own money. Who just lost lots of it.
But what about the people who both BORROWED money and SANK their own money into buying bank shares. And Perceptor is not talking about one or two hundred thousand naira worth of shares either. These banking officials were enticing people who had influence and power to invest HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of their own, and borrow HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of the bank’s – just to buy shares which were supposed to have known only one direction ... up!
Well, maybe Perceptor should be grateful that Perceptor isn’t a ‘person of influence’. Nobody came to Perceptor and said “Borrow five hundred million, throw in your own three hundred million and make some money”. Nobody thought that Perceptor was worth being let in on the kind of secret ways that big people in Naija use to ‘make’ money. Perceptor wasn’t big enough. Actually, Perceptor wasn’t even big enough to warrant a “Bring your hundred thousand and borrow two so that you can make some money”. But it leaves Perceptor wondering about all the other ‘big men’ in our country, and whether they are really as ‘big’ as they seem, or whether they are just big on other people’s money. This leads Perceptor to the first of a few other questions ...
1. What exactly is the difference between the people now being ‘named and shamed’ by the Central Bank of Nigeria and hounded by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the people who rig their way into power through fake elections so that they can help themselves to other people’s money directly?
As far as Perceptor is concerned, people who take money from banks because they are ‘big people’ or because they ‘know’ people are taking it from individual hard working bank customers who can never get a loan to finance their business projects and create jobs and profits because when they add the ridiculous rate of interest to the ‘thankyou’ that may have to go to the bank manager, they decide that they can’t do any legitimate business and forget about the loan.
But a politician who uses force or bribery to get elected so that they can have direct access to the national cake is also depriving individual hard working Nigerians of money or services and infrastructure that ought to have been built with that money. Money, services and infrastructure that they could have used – just like bank loans – to support their business projects and create jobs and profits. So Perceptor finds it A BIT RICH that the Senate and the House of Representatives have “approved” the actions taken by the CBN. They should kindly keep quiet. (Perceptor hopes that the moderation of this last advice is noted. Because Perceptor could have used stronger language, you know.)
2. EFCC sef! E no dey shame?
Well, Perceptor hopes Perceptor can be forgiven for coming down to ‘our level’ in asking that question, but honestly, Perceptor is more than a little bit nauseated by the way that the EFCC is now huffing and puffing and threatening to blow houses down after the CBN has done all the work. (Yes, Perceptor knows that the EFCC was stomping about the banks a few months ago, looking at their books, but what came of it eh?) And then on top of it, to just lock people up for days on end without charging them ... So much for the “rule of law”.
Yes, Perceptor knows you will say that that is the only language that these people understand. But – if Perceptor can borrow a phrase from Kayode Komolafe of ThisDay newspaper – this “sanitization euphoria” has been seen before in Naija. Unfortunately, when something begins to look arbitrary, or selective, or starts to touch some ‘untouchables’, the euphoria has been known to evaporate. At least, Perceptor remembers how during the Buhari/Idiagbon days, the whole nation was taken by surprise with a sudden currency change, and anybody who was caught with large amounts of old cash had to explain themselves. Then ... 53 suitcases belonging to a traditional ruler found their way into the country. Unopened. Well, nowadays, everybody has all sorts of excuses and explanations about whether there were 53 suitcases or 35, or whether they came in or went out, or whether they even existed at all! But what Perceptor knows is that once the country believed that one big man had been excused, that was the end of the integrity of the exercise. So ... if another traditional ruler finds himself stuck with a non-performing loan because of millions borrowed to buy bank shares, but doesn’t appear on the CBN or the EFCC’s list ... Anyway sha, what Perceptor knows is that EFCC should not put too much mouth in this matter.
And as for those pictures of CBN Governor Lamido Sanusi paying a visit to EFCC Chairman Farida Waziri, well frankly, they turned Perceptor’s stomach.
3. Why doesn’t the EFCC get ahead of the curve for once? Why doesn’t it do something about the power supply industry? Or the roads?
OK, Perceptor isn’t the biggest fan of the EFCC, but why doesn’t it go and do its own work and find out where all that electricity money went (after all, the House of Reps Committee did a lot of the work, and even if they later derailed, surely they must have collected the records of the public hearings from House Committee Chairman Elumelu when he was their guest?) or why the roads keep on getting washed away, or ... name it! instead of jumping in all over the banks and their debtors. Or in addition to jumping in etc. sha.
4. Does 2+2 add up to 6 in some parts of the country and only 3 in others? Or does 2+2 equal 4 everywhere?
Perceptor has to ask this question because when Perceptor hears that CBN Governor Lamido Sanusi is “pursuing a northern agenda”, Perceptor has to assume that the laws of mathematics and physics probably don’t apply in some parts of the country. Or could it be that people who have been putting two and two together, or even one and one together, and claiming that it will add up to six, but now find that it only adds up to three can’t think of any other explanation for the collapse of their plans to make quick easy money from bank share price rises? Oh dear! More questions.
5. On the other hand ... what about that warning by Vanguard newspaper five months ago, warning about plans by a ‘group’ to cripple and take over five top banks?
Well, Perceptor knows that you will immediately ask whether these five banks really qualify as ‘top’. OK. Granted. But Perceptor hopes that readers will understand why Perceptor is completely baffled and doesn’t know what to think when almost everything in the Vanguard story of 23rd March 2009 is coming to pass? Especially when CBN Governor Lamido Sanusi seems to have taken up globe-trotting after jumping in to sack five bank chiefs when the audit job is not even half done, and seems to be hunting for ‘foreign’ buyers.
Because Perceptor doesn’t think that there is any particular rule preventing Naijas from forming companies overseas, especially companies in countries where they may have taken up foreign citizenship (could be anywhere from ... say, Ireland – good for more than just golf courses – or perhaps South Africa – good for more than just petroleum contracts ...) and then those companies coming back as foreign saviours who will now buy up the tottering banks. Well, you the ordinary customer may decide that you aren’t going to keep your money in those tainted ‘new ownership’ banks, but if those banks just happen to get lucrative government deposits, tax-collection duties and so on, well, who cares about your chicken change?
6. Which doesn’t explain why, if the warning was pasted all over the front page of Vanguard newspaper five months ago, bank chiefs didn’t get their act together in time?
What Perceptor means is, that if you know that somebody is looking for how to roast you, you don’t cover yourself with oil and go and sit down by the fire. Or, if you should already happen to be covered in oil, you remove yourself from the vicinity of anything that looks or smells like fire, and start cleaning the oil OFF!
7. Why didn’t the CBN finish auditing ALL the banks before jumping all over five?
Because when Perceptor considers that fourteen banks have not yet been examined, and that we were first told that the results of the rest of these banks would be out the following week after the first tsunami, and then Perceptor sees that we haven’t heard anything about that since then, well, Perceptor wouldn’t like to be a customer of those other fourteen banks ...
Anyway, Perceptor isn’t the first person to wonder why the rush over the first ten banks (with complementary sacking of five bank chiefs, ‘naming and shaming’ big debtors etc.) and then the big Yar’Adua-like ‘studying the situation’ foot-dragging about either clearing or condemning the remaining banks. But since Perceptor isn’t the first to wonder, Perceptor NOW wonders why no convincing explanation has been forthcoming.
8. So what if the loan is without collateral?
Perceptor always believed that the Bankers’ Bible had it that “The best loan for a banker to give is one that has no security.” But of course, that was because a banker who only lent money to a viable project which that banker had taken the trouble to confirm was viable could expect the loan to ‘perform’, i.e. it was being lent for a productive and worthwhile venture. One that would pay for itself. One that the banker wouldn’t need to fall on the collateral to get their money back. One that the banker would be ready to stake their own reputation and their own job on because aforesaid banker had fully satisfied him or herself that the project was a good project. One where the banker considered more than the size of the ‘thankyou’ or the ‘bigness’ of the borrower. Perceptor was obviously living in the past. The distant past!
9. So, what about those private jets?
Just a question sha ...
10. Why do so many of these bankers have religious titles?
Just another question now!
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More Answers to Questions
Last blog (yes, Perceptor knows that was a long ago, but that’s because it took so long for Perceptor to get Perceptor’s head round the dizzying figures in the banks thing), Perceptor wondered whether President Umaru Yar’Adua was now going to be displaying the sort of speedy response and action that he appears to have expected of Governor Raji Fashola of Lagos State. Available evidence suggests to Perceptor that it is going to be a question of ‘Do as I say, not as I do’. Let’s take the Petroleum Training Institute. Now we can rightly say that we were witnessing a classic case of sleeping trouble being woken by nyanga when Petroleum Minister, Pa Rilwan Lukman, said that the PTI in Delta State would continue to provide ‘middle level management’, while the National College of Petroleum Studies would “rightly” (Perceptor is quoting from The Guardian’s report on the matter here) “rightly” provide apex training for the management level staff. (Or should we say pouring oil on flames?) Anyway, the point was that Pa Lukman said this on the 22nd of July, almost two months after the Federal Executive Council had approved contracts for the Petroleum College in Kaduna at its 25th May meeting.
But it took ten days for the Yar’Adua administration to wake up and say: ‘Oh no, we didn’t say that we were going to shelve the plan to make the PTI a university, only that we were awarding contracts about the Petroleum College.’ By then the Niger Delta was in uproar, the challenged-at-birth ‘amnesty’ was looking more shaky than ever, and even the spineless South-South governors had been forced to say ‘Haba!’ Having first pretended not to know what the problem was about and that he didn’t understand why people were getting so emotional (NOT necessarily the most calming words to say to a person who is frothing at the mouth with rage) Mr. President’s spokesperson finally came out to say that there were no such plans. Perceptor of course, always likes to take the pronouncements of government mouthpieces as gospel truth. At least, Perceptor likes to start off on that hopeful assumption. Perceptor is not one of those who assume that government responses are always so slow in coming because they need time to cook up their story. No, Perceptor assumes that any delay is simply because they are so busy in government with all the ... er, ‘studying the situation’, that they are doing that they simply don’t have time to respond immediately.
Still, Perceptor thinks that there ARE times when one has to put ‘studying the situation’ aside and deal with an immediate crisis so that it can be nipped in the bud. It is for this reason that Perceptor wonders what it would have cost to make that clarification (that there were no such plans) immediately the controversy arose? Why leave Pa Lukman to fan the flames – after all, tactfulness is not a quality immediately associated with great age, is it?
And More Answers that end up as Questions
It’s just that a couple of blogs ago, asking questions on the ‘Amnesty’ for Niger Delta Militants, Perceptor had wondered whether Mr. President had “got that in writing” from Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi. With these killings still going on, it doesn’t seem as though Mr. President got it in writing from anybody.
You Push Me, I Push You, I No Wan’ Go
Perceptor had better beg forgiveness from Professor Wole Soyinka for slightly misquoting his popular ditty which he penned and sang during the days when Shehu Shagari was the worst thing that had happened to Nigerians since the Civil War. Well, WS, whose boast in the song was that “I No Go Go”, did indeed ‘Go’ when he discovered that there really were worse things than Shagari, specifically General Sani Abacha, was talking about his country (which he loves), but Perceptor’s concern today is with the increasing numbers of people who don’t want to leave their rather cushy jobs.
*Ms. Adefunmilayo Tejuoso did not want to lose her job as Deputy Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly. Nor did her Action Congress party bosses want her to lose it. But everybody who was actually a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly did. So it was bye-bye ‘Funmi. Oh dear!
*Deacon Erastus Akingbola does not want to lose his job as Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Intercontinental Bank plc., whatever CBN Governor Lamido Sanusi might have to say about it. Despite the dark clouds of EFCC hanging over him, he has boldly challenged his removal in court. Perceptor doesn’t know enough about banking and banking law to know whether he has got a case (see above) but Perceptor sure thinks it was wise of him to be ‘elsewhere’ once his visits to the Emir of this and the Oba of that didn’t seem to be yielding the desired result.
The Meaning of Words ... Laughable
As used by ‘Barrister’ Jimoh Ibrahim in describing the N14.5 billion that he is supposed to be owing Oceanic Bank. He called it ‘laughable’. Hmmmmmmmmm. Perceptor isn’t laughing. Perceptor isn’t even smiling. And Perceptor suspects that for all his bravado and shakara, Ibrahim isn’t smiling either. Or won’t be when he contemplates his failure to get former Oceanic Bank MD Cecelia Ibru out of the country in his private jet, as reported by our very own Sahara Reporters ... Anyway, Perceptor wouldn’t necessarily recommend a stay at the NICON ‘Luxury’ Hotel in Abuja in the near future. More cutbacks on staff, cleaning, renovation ... no, Perceptor would advise finding somewhere else to stay.
The Meaning of Words ... Misinformed
As used by the Federal Government of Nigeria in describing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments about corruption in Nigeria. Hmmmmmmmm. Perceptor is of course, outraged that Mrs. Clinton would come here and say rude things about us and our record in ‘fighting corruption’, but misinformed? Perceptor hopes that Mrs. Clinton hasn’t been receiving reports of extravagant spending by the steady stream of Nigerian top officials who seem to be just helpless in the face of their compulsion to keep on going to the United States, and to spend huge numbers of United States Dollars on every imaginable luxury. Maybe that’s where she is getting her information from ...
History Lesson
Perceptor was interested to see one commentator – out of disgust at banking revelations – calling for a coup, or ‘failing that’ a revolution. So Perceptor thinks it would be a good idea to study a bit of history, so that we stop pretending and recognise that we have never had a revolution in Nigeria, although we have had several coups that falsely claimed to be 'revolutions'. In 1966 the military led a pair of coups that wiped off a political leadership but did not bring about a 'revolution' - rather, the whole thing became ethnicized and tribalized and led to civil war. In 1975, the military led a coup against themselves, but it was a coup, not a revolution. Same goes for the Buhari/Idiagbon, Babangida and Abacha coups. They were all coups but were definitely not revolutions, whatever they liked to call themselves.
In Ghana on the other hand, there was an uprising of the people on June 4th 1979 of which Rawlings became the leader or figurehead.
Still, Perceptor is not all that surprised that someone would think that a revolution is a second best option to a military coup. After all, why bother to do the work and take the risk involved in a genuine revolution (i.e. something that requires more than just killing people) if you can get somebody else – the military – to do the job for you. It’s just that History teaches us that when the military do the job, it’s the military that reap the reward. So if the Naija people want the benefits of a revolution, Perceptor would advise that the matter should be referred to “The Man In The Mirror”.
In the Spirit of Aunty Dora
To be frank, having promised to keep this section running, Perceptor was so confounded and embarrassed by the complete absence of items to include in it that Perceptor thought it best to draw the veil of silence over the section and hope that aficionados of these scribblings wouldn’t notice the absence. But now, Perceptor is delighted to announce the triumphant return of this section which is devoted to celebrating GOOD THINGS about Nigeria.
*First item is the way that the Power Holding Company of Nigeria has decided to stop ‘holding’ power and start releasing it to paying customers. Well, to SOME paying customers. Yes, Perceptor knows that you will say that the very slight improvement from a situation where most Naijas were in total darkness for weeks and even months on end doesn’t warrant a mention under the section named after the revered Minister of Information. You will even say that actually, we are a lot worse off – power-wise – than we were on the 29th of May 2007 when President Umaru Yar’Adua said that the power situation in the country was SO BAD that he intended to declare a State of Emergency in the Power sector. You will remind Perceptor of speculation that things were getting worse, and going backwards, on the réculer pour mieux sauter principle so that the country would be able to have a good run in at a GREAT LEAP FORWARD in the provision of power to people. And you might therefore say that what we have seen so far doesn’t qualify as a ‘leap’ at all, and barely rates mention as ‘inching forward’. That the days when we had to complain that the water in the ’fridge’ was too cold have not yet returned...
But Perceptor insists on looking on the BRIGHT side. (Well, obviously not a side brightened by public electricity.) That means that if there was NO light AT ALL yesterday and there is FIVE MINUTES today, then things are getting better. It doesn’t matter that there was FIVE HOURS of power a year ago. A year ago Mr. President was still ‘studying the situation’ so it would be most unfair to compare what was happening then with what is happening now! Things Got Better. OK?
*Second item is that the Yar’Adua administration has DEBUNKED wicked claims that there are 230 Nigerians on death row in our sister African country and would-be pivot of the United States of Africa, the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. (That’s Libya to you and me.) False reports even had it that the Libyan brothers were going to secretly execute these 230 Nigerians over the weekend of August 15th (unlike the open type of execution that we do here in Naija when we arrest, sorry, capture ... say, Boko Haram leaders). No, there are NOT 230 Nigerians waiting to be put to death by our Libyan brothers. There are only FOURTEEN! So that’s 216 lives saved right there!
*Third item is that Nigeria’s inflation rate has DROPPED! To only 11.1%!!! From ... er, 11.2%. Still, it’s SOMEthing isn’t it?
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