The saga of a Tilapia swallowing a whale, which is the true story of Access Bank acquiring the Intercontinental Bank has been in the public domain since 2012. It is therefore never hidden at any time.
I had a hard time contemplating posting that article by NAIRALAND because of our emotional and sentimental environment.
Wigwe and his co-travelers in the house of scam called Access Bank did business, took advantage of the loose system, and became rich. It is in order for our environment that is a cesspit of corruption.
Let us ask some critical questions:
1. During Soludo and Sanusi tenures as CBN governors, merger and acquisitions in the banking industry were forced because some of the third tier banks were collapsing. Capitalize or be acquired by the strong ones; From what emerged, Access Bank management approached Intercontinental for a loan to remain afloat and recapitalize.
Some of the executives of Access Bank also took personal loans to enhance their position in the bank. Enter a well connected crook from north central, whose father had a family bank that was moribund through mismanagement and fraudulent practices, took loans from same intercontinental bank to purchase 4 property in Ikoyi.
Somehow, governor Sanusi found Intercontinental Bank, the strongest in Nigeria then, with asset base of over 400billion to be distressed, despite expert report to the contrary, that this bank has no nonperforming loans in its books.
Then against every other options that could be applied, Intercontinental was considered too distressed and has to be sold. The 11 billion loaned to the north central guy, and the 16 billion to Access and sundry loans to its directors were part of what was used to justify that Intercontinental was distressed, and must be sold off! Who was the buyer? Access Bank, which needed 16 billion to stay afloat, found 50 billion to buy an asset worth 400 billion. It was the greatest heist ever pulled off in Nigeria.
If Intercontinental would be sold off, should Access buy it, if there is anything called MORALITY? Of course, ‘there is no morality in business”.
But what about with God?
2. At the point it was declared insolvent and must be sold, one share of Intercontinental was about N7. Access was about N1. 1 share of access was exchanged for 20 shares of access: meaning that a person who invested a live savings to buy 1,000,000 of Intercontinental Bank shares has a 7 million Naira investment. He now has 50,000 shares of Access Bank at N1.0 so 7 million Naira investment became 50,000 thousand Naira overnight. I had always believed that CBN has a duty to protect investors’ funds!!
3. QUESTION: if you were that man who invested 7 million in Intercontinental how would you feel?
4. The years 2005 to 2008 were years that Banks and the stock exchange saw very limited supervision and oversight. The director general was a woman called Okereke-Oyuike, who knew next to nothing about the Stock Exchange, parading herself all over the place as a professor but was eventually unveiled as a fraud. There was too much exposure from the banks in the Stock exchanges to the extent that companies without any track records were priced very high. Virtually all the banks, including Intercontinental, became reckless in their exposure at the stock exchange. The bubble burst and most of the banks and insurance went under. Intercontinental was too strong to be so adversely affected. Erastus Akingbola went to court to challenge the takeover, but the forces against him were too strong. The system had passed to Jonathan then and the principal officers of Access were all from the Niger Delta area. 5. Was Wigwe or any Bank chief executive in Nigeria a promoter of the Nigerian economy? Check their books: they are all scammers and money launderers. The big banks are the ones that drove us to the level we are at today!!
Using Access as the typical bank: check their half-year report for 2023: Access Holdings Plc (ACCESS.ng) HY2023 Interim Report (africanfinancials.com)
Go to page 45: Fair Value and Foreign Exchange gain was 192 billion Naira.
Got to page 165: Total Net Foreign Exchange Gain: N244,335,000,000.00 (two hundred and forty-four billion Naira)
For God’s sake, how much more rotten can a system get? Emefiole just helped some to rape the Nigerian nation and its hapless citizens.
Compound this for the full year 2023 and see what it means!!
So much for the bank chief executives who are advancing the economy of Nigeria.
I am not trying to discredit late Wigwe but any attempts at apotheosis of any of the Nigeria bank chief executives, dead or alive, is a fraud and a slap on the faces of innocent Nigerians that are daily bearing the brunt of their shenanigans.
