Sylva Nze Ifedigbo
Like a hurricane, it swept through, leaving anything but smiles on many faces. Not the faces of the sacked Bank Chiefs and their high profile debtors. Not on the faces of the Bank staff and innocent depositors. Not on the faces of shareholders and investors.
For weeks it was the subject of national gossip, on the TV, in the papers and on the Internet. Naturally, three camps emerged. There was the pro Sanusi who awed by the revelations applauded the reform efforts of the Central Bank Governor. The anti Sanusi group who though equally awed, saw the impending melt down and advised caution. The final camp consisted of the majority of Nigerians who do not understand the economic jargons but whose only concern is to have food on the table every day.
It’s been over a year and many things have happened since. Loans have been recovered, Assets frozen, people put on trial, businesses grounded, Jobs lost, pays cut, share values crashed and yes, the banks have since erased the advancing of credit facilities as one of their services. We all refer to the situation as fall outs of Sanusi’s banking reform and is there any one who has not been affected in some way?
There is however another fall out of the reform. It is fast emerging that Sanusi swept away Bank Chiefs he described as fraudulent and replaced them with even more fraudulent bunch. Interim management teams as he called them were supposed to run the supposedly distressed banks for a while, stabilize them and put them in a shape that will be attractive to investors. These Interim Teams who have long outlived their interim-ness are now beginning not only to help themselves to whatever is left of the supposedly struggling banks resources but are also turning the banks into their fiefdom .
If the news out of Union Bank is anything to go by then there is yet many reasons to give Sanusi Lamido a thumb down. The revelation came to me in the form of a full page open letter by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor in one of the Dailies, highlighting what they termed “Unwholesome actions of Mrs. Funke Osibodu led Management Team at Union Bank.”
The revelations are as shocking as they are worrying. Mrs. Osibodu is said to have doubled the wages of the management team. While the ousted team earned about N38 Million per annum, the current executive Directors each earn N68 million per annum while that of the Group Managing Director is an official secret. This is in addition to tax free two years housing grant in advance totaling N180million, and medical grant of US$120,000 for each director all of which has been paid in full. In addition, Mrs. Osibodu bought her self two bullet proof Mercedes Jeeps at a total cost of N40million and Mercedes ‘E’ series for Four Executive Directors.
This spending profile which smacks of insanity certainly does not sound like measures to reposition an allegedly sinking Bank. As shocking as they are, it is even more shocking to hear of the manipulations in the bank books. For example, the Banks Fixed Assets has undergone an unexplainable reduction from N79,522billion in 31st December 2001 to N62,iiibillion as at 30th June 2010. Without stretching logic here, are we supposed to assume that N17.41billion in Fixed Assets simply grew wings and flew away in six months?
The management team does not fail to scream that the Bank s in bad standing financially, yet it has gone on a recruitment frenzy, hiring high earning senior personnel whose career exposure is no where as good as that of existing staff to justify the bumper compensation packages. What is more, the existing staffs have been moved away from sensitive duties, allowing the interim Management and their new recruits the needed space to run the show without challenge. And yes all these special new recruits are said to all be from the Interim GMD’s ethnic group. How convenient.
To add to all these, the Osibodu led team is accused of highhandedness and insensitivity. Indeed, the letter stated clearly that no bank in the country would dare compete with Union Bank under the interim leadership in very poor labour relations. Staff are not being promoted when due, 37 staff were sacked for overdrawing their account even when Mrs. Osidodu’s own account had been overdrawn within the same period. Three months after, the team has refused to act on the report that reviewed the illegal and unwarranted sack of 223 employees of the Bank.
There are also other allegations of deliberate de-marketing and striping of the bank Assets which has seen treasured long time customers of the bank being hounded out with their deposits and goodwill all of which curiously points to a deliberate effort to impoverish the bank and truly make it seem insolvent and thus good only for sale which has always been the alleged mission of the Central Bank Governor for the outset.
These are by all means weighty accusations which can not be swept under the carpet. For the NLC to make this public shows that it has gone way beyond mere speculations. The figures and precise information provided do not equally sound fictitious. While the team is presumed innocent until proven guilty, we can only hope that the necessary process necessary to proving that they are not guilty is set in motion under an atmosphere of integrity and if indeed they have done these things, they face the same fate as those whose places they took.
In all however, it is pertinent to note that this situation provides one more reason to give the Central Bank Governor a thumb down for his reforms that have failed to reform. Perhaps we shall all learn from this that there are many ways to kill a rat without spilling blood. Zeal must always be balanced with rationality or else it all comes crashing down as our banking industry has today.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Leadership woes worse than HIV
A popular Nigerian stand up comedian once stated that while other countries of the world were bedeviled by one form of natural disaster or the other, Nigeria’s own nightmare was Bad Government.
It would amount to perhaps, the understatement of the century to repeat here that the reason why we are where we are as a country-one of the more popular countries that has not shown any capacity and which certainly will not be meeting any of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, is solely due to a consistent failure of leadership. Chinue Achebe thought so, I think so too and indeed, a whole majority of Nigerians think so too such that we have come to sort of accept it as our lot-our own natural disaster like Basket Mouth would say.
If we all seem to agree that bad leadership is our problem, what then is the solution?
People while criticizing the Government often say things like “if I get in there, I will do bla bla bla” but history has shown that when they did get there, they performed even worse. Successive military governments often cited corruption and derailed leadership as reasons for over throwing the previous government, yet before long they them selves get thrown out for the same reason. The conclusion therefore points to the fact that we’ve been having the wrong notion of what leadership is all about and our approach to solving the problem has equally been wrong and futile because we have been treating leadership as a title or a position of authority.
Naturally, it is more difficult to learn new ideas as an adult. A popular Igbo adage has it that you don’t learn the use of the left hand in old age. So also, you don’t learn to lead a people aright when you get into power. I often argue that leadership workshops or seminars organized for our leaders are a pure waste of money as it can not make them change. This is because we have leaders who are ill prepared and ill equipped to handle the responsibilities of the position they found them selves in and in most cases they get to those positions either by rigging, federal character, quota or biased appointment. They are thus lacking in the moral pre-requisite for leading and like they say in law, once a process is wrong, the following actions that are a fall out of the initial process are equally wrong.
I wish therefore to opine here that leadership is an attitude not a position or title.
Leadership includes simple acts we carry out in our every day lives that portray who we are as an individual and the content of our character. Such things as not walking on the lawn, not beating the traffic light, not thrashing the road from our car, not messing up a public toilet, not posting a wrong time while signing at work, etc
It includes our response to situations and our ability to make informed decisions at every point in time even when it is inconvenient. Leadership is being able to motivate others and inspire them into attaining their full potentials as individuals especially by showing good example. It encompasses selflessness, dedication and steadfastness.
It is only when we raise a generation of Nigerians who have the right attitude that we would be able to solve our leadership problems at the top for someone who has had it as an attitude to be at school before 8.00am will also not fail to turn up to work at 8.00am and when he/she becomes a Minster, no worker in the ministry will dare turn up late because the boss him self doesn’t. That is leadership.
The fear I have however for my country is that those right attitudes are currently scarce in her youths who are soon to take over the public positions of leadership. On the contrary really, we have a generation that is so in tune with the failures of the past, have perfected it and are eager to take over so as to unleash the worst forms of leadership the world has ever witnessed.
I know some people would not want to agree with me and perhaps will call me a prophet of doom. They would want to argue that there are many young Nigerians out there who are breaking new grounds in all fields of life which gives the hope that all would be well for Nigeria in the future. I wish I could share that optimism. While I am also an incurable optimist, I am also a realist. No need saying a cup is half full, when you know it is half empty and fast going down.
The solution?: Change.
No one person can bring up a formula for solving Nigeria’s leadership woes. The solution simply lies in a genuine change in our attitudes as individuals. I am a big supporter of a reintroduction of civic education in primary and secondary schools and perhaps even the universities. If the family units can not teach us to act right, then I guess the schools will.
Also, I challenge our Men of God both Christians and Muslim to go beyond talking about witches, and wealth or about how one religion is superior to the others and start teaching their congregation how to become better people, inculcating in them the right attitudes that make for good leadership. The religious institutions should also be a strong voice against bad leadership and must begin to see it as their responsibility to save the society from final collapse.
The private sector must also step in. Though I don’t have statistics, but I am quite sure that the numbers of NGO’s on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria are perhaps ten folds more than those that deal with capacity building and reformation especially among youths. While AIDS is a big problem, I wish to state that bad leadership is even more deadly for it takes a good leader to make the better policy and supervise same to help those suffering from the disease. Civil society must begin to pay greater attention to leadership development and begin to work towards raising a new generation of leaders who have the right attitude to be leaders.
In the light of the above, I wish to commend the efforts of those organizations that have taken a lead in an attempt at trying to develop leaders in our great nation. Their efforts are still at best insignificant considering the population of this country.
We need leaders, not rulers and leaders are those who have got the right attitude. The time to raise them is now.
It would amount to perhaps, the understatement of the century to repeat here that the reason why we are where we are as a country-one of the more popular countries that has not shown any capacity and which certainly will not be meeting any of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, is solely due to a consistent failure of leadership. Chinue Achebe thought so, I think so too and indeed, a whole majority of Nigerians think so too such that we have come to sort of accept it as our lot-our own natural disaster like Basket Mouth would say.
If we all seem to agree that bad leadership is our problem, what then is the solution?
People while criticizing the Government often say things like “if I get in there, I will do bla bla bla” but history has shown that when they did get there, they performed even worse. Successive military governments often cited corruption and derailed leadership as reasons for over throwing the previous government, yet before long they them selves get thrown out for the same reason. The conclusion therefore points to the fact that we’ve been having the wrong notion of what leadership is all about and our approach to solving the problem has equally been wrong and futile because we have been treating leadership as a title or a position of authority.
Naturally, it is more difficult to learn new ideas as an adult. A popular Igbo adage has it that you don’t learn the use of the left hand in old age. So also, you don’t learn to lead a people aright when you get into power. I often argue that leadership workshops or seminars organized for our leaders are a pure waste of money as it can not make them change. This is because we have leaders who are ill prepared and ill equipped to handle the responsibilities of the position they found them selves in and in most cases they get to those positions either by rigging, federal character, quota or biased appointment. They are thus lacking in the moral pre-requisite for leading and like they say in law, once a process is wrong, the following actions that are a fall out of the initial process are equally wrong.
I wish therefore to opine here that leadership is an attitude not a position or title.
Leadership includes simple acts we carry out in our every day lives that portray who we are as an individual and the content of our character. Such things as not walking on the lawn, not beating the traffic light, not thrashing the road from our car, not messing up a public toilet, not posting a wrong time while signing at work, etc
It includes our response to situations and our ability to make informed decisions at every point in time even when it is inconvenient. Leadership is being able to motivate others and inspire them into attaining their full potentials as individuals especially by showing good example. It encompasses selflessness, dedication and steadfastness.
It is only when we raise a generation of Nigerians who have the right attitude that we would be able to solve our leadership problems at the top for someone who has had it as an attitude to be at school before 8.00am will also not fail to turn up to work at 8.00am and when he/she becomes a Minster, no worker in the ministry will dare turn up late because the boss him self doesn’t. That is leadership.
The fear I have however for my country is that those right attitudes are currently scarce in her youths who are soon to take over the public positions of leadership. On the contrary really, we have a generation that is so in tune with the failures of the past, have perfected it and are eager to take over so as to unleash the worst forms of leadership the world has ever witnessed.
I know some people would not want to agree with me and perhaps will call me a prophet of doom. They would want to argue that there are many young Nigerians out there who are breaking new grounds in all fields of life which gives the hope that all would be well for Nigeria in the future. I wish I could share that optimism. While I am also an incurable optimist, I am also a realist. No need saying a cup is half full, when you know it is half empty and fast going down.
The solution?: Change.
No one person can bring up a formula for solving Nigeria’s leadership woes. The solution simply lies in a genuine change in our attitudes as individuals. I am a big supporter of a reintroduction of civic education in primary and secondary schools and perhaps even the universities. If the family units can not teach us to act right, then I guess the schools will.
Also, I challenge our Men of God both Christians and Muslim to go beyond talking about witches, and wealth or about how one religion is superior to the others and start teaching their congregation how to become better people, inculcating in them the right attitudes that make for good leadership. The religious institutions should also be a strong voice against bad leadership and must begin to see it as their responsibility to save the society from final collapse.
The private sector must also step in. Though I don’t have statistics, but I am quite sure that the numbers of NGO’s on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria are perhaps ten folds more than those that deal with capacity building and reformation especially among youths. While AIDS is a big problem, I wish to state that bad leadership is even more deadly for it takes a good leader to make the better policy and supervise same to help those suffering from the disease. Civil society must begin to pay greater attention to leadership development and begin to work towards raising a new generation of leaders who have the right attitude to be leaders.
In the light of the above, I wish to commend the efforts of those organizations that have taken a lead in an attempt at trying to develop leaders in our great nation. Their efforts are still at best insignificant considering the population of this country.
We need leaders, not rulers and leaders are those who have got the right attitude. The time to raise them is now.
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