Mr. Ifie Sekibo is the Managing
Director/Chief Executive Officer of Heritage Bank Plc. In this interview
with Joseph Ushiaghale, Chika Amanze-Nwachuku and Obinna Chima, the
bank CEO responded to all the allegations levelled against the financial
institution. He also highlighted some of the programmes put in place by
the bank to ensure its numerous customers get the best value for their
investments. Excerpts:
We have had this continuous
negative news about your bank, that it is illiquid and that you can no
longer meet your obligations to customers. What is the true situation of
things at Heritage Bank?
The true situation is that it is not true
that we are illiquid, we have always been liquid. It is true that the
whole industry faced some form of liquidity challenge when we all moved
monies into the Treasury Single Account (TSA). So, a customer makes a
request overnight for N2 billion or N3 billion, and you tell him to
allow you pay him over two days, and they shout, thinking it is
illiquidity. It is not! It has to do with the management of your
liquidity position. But we dare to say that since June that this
negative press started and till today, our doors have not closed one
day. Every customer that comes in gets his money. Yes, there could be
delays, but those are normal banking activities where you are managing
your liquidity naturally, so that you gauge your inflows and outflows
and know how to manage them. And if anybody would look at it, we have
over this period, because of the negative press, not that the negative
press are true, and people’s anxiety, we had flight to safety.
That is some customers took their money
away from the bank, and when they found out that nothing happened to the
bank, they brought back their money. In that outflow period, over N300
billion left our system and came back into our system. It left and
majority of that fund have come back in, because people have realised
that it is all false rumours. Firstly, they said the next bank the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) would take over was going to be Heritage
Bank. It is not true! The central bank cleared that issue.
Again, some people believe that if you
don’t sell foreign exchange (FX) to them, then you are illiquid, it
doesn’t add up that way. FX is a general problem within the industry. If
we can’t get it from the central bank and it is not available, we can’t
sell what we don’t have. So, for somebody to say if you don’t sell FX,
that means you are illiquid, it doesn’t add up that way. Are my
customers who have domiciliary accounts with me satisfied? Yes they are.
Am I able to fund Letters of Credit (LCs) that are legitimate? Yes, I
am.
Am I able to open new LCs? Yes I am. Am I
able to give credit to customers that need them? Yes I can. So, if I am
doing all these natural banking and traditional banking, where then is
the illiquidity that anybody is talking about? Naturally, when people
hear that there is a problem, they rush to the doors of the bank and
even the slightest service failures could make people believe it is
true. But when you correct the service failure and naturally everything
is going on well, then you ask, where is this story coming from? We are a
public institution and so members of the public react to the kind of
news they get and the kind of news they are fed with. We are saying that
there is no such thing as illiquidity and we are not insolvent. We are
very liquid, we are meeting our obligations and we would continue to
meet our obligations.
You touched on the FX issue. One
of the allegations was that the FX in the domiciliary accounts of your
customers had been eroded by the bank?
Let me put that in context. And this has
to do with the entire industry. When we first had challenges with FX, we
resolved either to bring down our past due obligations of our
customers, to use some of our domiciliary account position to be able to
fund. It was a national issue. If you don’t pay down your past due
obligations outside with your correspondent bank, they cut off your
credit lines and everything you have. Your customers would be unable to
open new LCs. So, you took the difficult decision to say let’s fund from
our position, those LCs, believing that either the CBN, or you could
have funds from export proceeds to be able to meet those obligations.
Now, because the supply from those two
ends is limited, there is a funding gap. That funding gap could cause
delays here and there. Don’t forget that we have risk assets which are
loans we have given to customers in dollars. They also pay in piecemeal.
So, sometimes, a customer comes to say he wants to take $1 million and
you promise to give him his $1 million in two days, because you have a
shortfall. Another customer owing you pays back, and you then meet up
that obligation.
So, naturally, it revolves. No bank today
can say every customer that comes into their banking hall, they can pay
them all. It is not possible. And when you have a challenging situation
like we have today, the chances are that there would be gaps here and
there, but in the long run, you meet your obligation and pay them, which
is most important to the customers. There is no where that it is
written that if John gives me $1, I should keep the $1 and wait for him
and whenever he comes, I should give it back to him. When John’s $1
comes, I can use it to pay Peter. When James’ $3 comes and John request
from his $1, I would take from the $3 to give him and then keep $2. That
is cash management and in that process there could be gaps, which is
why we have the interbank.
If I have a gap, I can call on Bank B, to
say I have a gap and I need fund, and I would pay interest to Bank B
for that gap to be filled. The day Bank B also has a gap, it would call
on Heritage Bank for support to cover its gap also. And that gap
coverage might be one day or two days. It doesn’t make the bank
insolvent or illiquid at all. The system is self funding and self
correcting over time. So, you don’t just target one bank, when in truth
every bank will do the same thing.
Another of the allegation was
that your bank is now relying heavily on the interbank market and
borrowing at very high interest rates?
There is what is called the interbank. In
today’s market, if I have to take money from bank B, I would give them
treasury bills in replacement. It is a treasury play. If I say Bank A,
give me N1 billion, I must give Bank A N1 billion worth of treasury
bills. That is in lieu of cash. When I get my cash, I return back the N1
billon and collect back my treasury bills and keep. When they don’t
have, they would give me same treasury bills and give them cash. That is
what the interbank market is all about.
Now, some banks have relationship with
other banks that don’t require them to give treasury bills, just the
money. We call that clean lines. As a new bank, I don’t have a clean
line with any bank. So, every bank that gives me N1, I give them
corresponding treasury bills, which means I must be strong. So, while
you call it borrowing, for us, it is a treasury play. Again, I might
have a customer that wants to do a transaction.
For instance, he wants to bring in goods
and request that Heritage Bank should borrow him N2 billion. And I say
okay, rather than use my cash which I use in trading everyday, I can go
to Bank A, give the bank treasury bills, I collect the cash and give to
customers. The bank gives me at probably interbank rate, I top it up and
give to the customer. The customer finishes, refunds me my money and I
redeem my treasury bills. So, how I manage my treasury is a function of
what I see, what I read in the economy and how I view the economy. I
might have tonnes of cash and I may decide to buy treasury bills and
hold and take cash from interbank. Sometimes, treasury bills rates are
better than interbank rates.
So, I will put the money in treasury
bills and collect cash from the interbank. What I now do is to go to the
central bank, buy treasury bills at a higher rate, I take the treasury
bills, I go to Bank A and say take treasury bills and give me cash, at a
lower rate. I use that cash to trade. The net difference is profit to
me. That is what is called trading in treasury and interbank market. And
it is a continuous thing for every bank. And if while doing that, I
have a shortage of cash, I then quickly unwind.
So, doing natural banking shouldn’t be a
problem. I have a balance that was published and everybody saw it. We
have only been one year as a national bank after taking Enterprise Bank,
which was a loss-making bank, and we were over N1 billion profitable.
That bank is not insolvent. Our balance is there for anybody to review.
We have over N65 billion of shareholders’ funds. So, you are not talking
of a bank that is small, even though we are new.
The other issue is that because
of what is going on in your bank, FirstBank that is handling your
international clearing is said to be very reluctant to deal with
Heritage Bank and that your bank is indebted to them to the tune of
about N5 billion?
Let me correct that impression. For every
clearing you do, first you put what we call a collateral with the
clearing bank. That is a basic minimum, that in the event my clearing
cheques comes in and my inward clearing is less than my outward cheques,
I must have enough to security to cover the difference. On one or two
days, which happens anywhere, there was a difference and FirstBank said
we should make up the difference, and we made up the difference. Now,
when a bank comes under the type of bad press we faced, there is always
the tendency of mass cash out. In that period of mass cash out, you then
need to find a way to quickly unwind your securities to back it, which
was what happened.
That I was out of FirstBank’s difference
by N3 or N4 billion is not new and not illiquidity. FirstBank would only
say Heritage Bank should make it up by N5 billion. Then the question
would be, how much is our clearing collateral with them? Probably, if
clearing collateral is about N4 billion, then we need to send them extra
collateral of N1 billion treasury bills. Once we give them, you are
covered and you go to clearing the next day. Now, when you have the kind
of bad press, it is possible that in three or four days, you may have
more outflows than inflows. You have to be strong enough to withstand
such shock.
FirstBank being your clearing bank would
want to know if you are able to stand it and our answer to them was
“yes, we can.” And that “yes, we can” is a function of us moving
treasury bills. So, we have to do that daily, we don’t do that monthly. I
would not want to give FirstBank, N1 more than what I am required to
give them, which I will never know until the end of the day. It is only
around 6pm of that day, that FirstBank would send me an e-mail, stating
our net clearing position and they would inform us of the amount
expected from us.
And the first thing in the morning,
Heritage Bank would move the money to FirstBank. The next day again, you
do clearing and they (FirstBank) might say “Heritage in your net
difference, you have credit,” and they will ask you (Heritage Bank) if
they should return the money or they should hold it since it is a
revolving process. If you say hold it, they would and if you ask them to
return it, they would return it. So, whether you have a negative or
positive position is a function of how much comes in and how much goes
out.
Have we been out of clearing? Not one
day, not one minute and not one second. Is FirstBank anxious? Yes,
FirstBank would be anxious. When there is a bad press, they know because
bad press gives rise to possible more outflows than inflows. There
would be inflows quite alright, but there might be more outflows. So,
they (FirstBank would be talking to you (Heritage Bank). So, anybody who
sees that talking to as a problem, then doesn’t understand banking.
Let’s say there is a worst case scenario that I don’t have bills to
cover my position that is where the central bank comes in because it is
the lender of last resort.
If FirstBank says today, Heritage Bank
what you have is N2 billion or N3 billion as negative, what we have as
your clearing collateral is N1 billion, do you have N2 billion to give
us? And we say no, I would tell FirstBank to hold on one more day and we
would talk to the central, bank, so that we can borrow from the CBN and
give you (FirstBank). So the CBN would give us the money at the
Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) plus five. While the CBN sets the MPR is that
any bank that has that would come and take from her and use. So, if
then I say because of the rush out of the door, I need N5 billion, to
cover for the gap, the CBN would give me. But I must always tell the CBN
when I am going to repay.
In fact, they don’t need to ask me, the
day they see credit in my position, they take it. It is a self-running
and self-balancing treasury system. But we must be talking to each other
just to be sure that we know what is happening. So, when people said we
are out of the clearing or that we are owing FirstBank, it is just a
revolving situation. That was why the central bank can boldly come out
to say every bank is okay.
Again, one of the allegations was
that you have been frequent at the CBN discount window, which to some
is also a sign of trouble?
If you have a kind of negative press
which makes money go out of your system more than it enters, you will
access the window so that you don’t cause systemic risk.
One of the things that exposed the
situation at Skye Bank then was the frequency at which it was accessing
the discount window…(cuts in)
No. Let’s separate the two, and this is
very important. The reason the CBN intervened in Skye Bank was very
clear and the CBN also mentioned it. We are not in that situation and we
cannot be part of that situation. Those things the central bank stated
as reason why it intervened in Skye Bank do not apply to me. What we
have here are normal interbank and banking activities. We are
profitable; we are in the money market playing normally. We are placing
and we are receiving funds. That one day my placing figures went higher
than others, does not mean a problem.
When there is a black swine effect where a
negative press comes in and you have a more than normal outflow
suddenly, the central bank and everybody would want to know what is
happening. Somebody who gave you money for 90 days, from which you have
planned and given loans, you bought treasury bills with the money, and
the person comes before the 90 days that you give him back his money.
That will surely reverse everything you planned for. You have to quickly
adjust your cash position to be able to address the situation.
There are also allegations that
you and your directors are involved in insider trading and you laundered
over N12.8 billion. Also, that the EFCC has invited you for questioning
over money laundering. What is your position on these issues?
I think the EFCC is still alive and is
still there. Those kind of allegations are easy to find out. I have
never been at the EFCC to discuss any such thing. They have never called
me and we have never had any discussion on it. There is no day anybody
has come to my office to have that type of conversation. The only time
almost all bank CEOs went to meet the central bank was because of the
NNPC money. They mentioned our name in the press. And Heritage Bank had
the least of the amount owed – $85 million, which we inherited from
Enterprise Bank.
We took over Enterprise Bank, in 2012,
NNPC gave Enterprise Bank $85 million. Today, it is not there, so we are
dealing with it. And we have gone into an arrangement with the central
bank and NNPC to tell them how we would pay back. I was not in that
organisation when the $85 million was given. So, when somebody makes
that type of allegation, I just wonder how you launder money that is in
the bank’s position. As at 2012, I was not even a managing director of a
bank and how can I launder money that I was not part of? So, I am
saying it is not true.
So, what do you think is the cause of the continuous bad press?
You see, when we were Heritage Bank, we
were at peace. We were small and we threatened nobody, we did our thing
and we grew our business. We bought Enterprise Bank.
Apparently…(laughs).
So are you saying it was the acquisition of Enterprise that triggered the bad press?
I want to be very philosophical about
that. Why? As a business decision for Heritage Bank then, we believed it
was one of the best decisions we took. Enterprise was an organisation
that had about 160 branches; Heritage Bank had just 11 branches. To get
one branch functionally running, could cost you on the minimum, N60
million. It’s a no brainier to say if you get those 160 branches, you
can do more business, distribute your services across the country, than
with 11 branches. Secondly, the financials with which we used in taken
over Enterprise Bank was 2013/2014. It took us a year and six months to
consummate that transaction.
So, by the time we finally consummated
the transactions, the financials we used were far different with what we
came out with. We are not making excuses; we did not go out to shout
that that was wrong. We took it in and we believed we could turn it
around. Don’t forget our history, Heritage Bank used to be Societe
Generale Bank of Nigeria (SGBN). That bank was dead for 10 years. This
same group of young men, turned a 10-year old dead bank to life and made
it work.
Now, before we could swallow that, we
went and bought Enterprise Bank. So, suddenly you are seeing some people
who were not able to revive one organisation that was dead, customers
monies were lost and we were able to make customers get back their
monies 10 years after. We now went into Enterprise Bank with the belief
that we can do the same thing and leverage on the branch network. And we
succeeded. There was no rancor. Most times if you have merger of that
nature you have rancour, but here there was none.
We kept almost every staff. Then, we said
let’s keep them for one year and that after one year, we would do an
evaluation and then we begin to let people go. We were about to let the
first set of people go when the first negative press hit us. So, we
stopped and didn’t let anybody go again. Let me show you the
coincidence, when again we decided to let people go, the next bad press
hit us. What does that tell you? I don’t want to speculate.
I am the MD of the bank, I love my staff,
I appreciate them because they work very hard, but not all of us work
very hard. We have been told in our faces that some people like to be in
a government bank rather than being a private entity, because we push
too hard on targets and all that. Yes, we are going to exit people
because of targets. We are going to exit those who have been docile for
years.
We are saying, is it worth the job of
4,000 people employed in the organisation? If your income is not able to
sustain the business in the level at which you want, you need to
rationalise. Now, in that space of rationalising the business, some
people would get hurt and they could do anything. I am not saying they
did, I am only saying the coincidence for me is just too much. As a
responsible organisation, we have never woken up and just fired people.
We announce it, we meet as a team. The moment we make such conversation,
we get a bad press.
So, do you have one house in the bank?
Even in a family where you have same
father and same mother, they quarrel. But it is still one house. It is
not two houses. I have been a student of banks working amongst each
other. The biggest challenge is always the people. Our merger was one of
the fastest and seamless, but the people were the problem. Now you say
people who were former Heritage Bank and people who were in former
Enterprise Bank, there would be a culture clash.
But we took time to educate ourselves
that everybody must be equal on one platform. Now, is it possible that
some people don’t believe in this dream? It is possible. Is it possible
that some of us see the new outlook as a threat to their own survival?
It is possible. Now, as the MD, it is my responsibility to gather them
and keep selling the dream to them and keep explaining to them that we
are better off together than trying to say I was former Heritage Bank or
former Enterprise Bank.
Some of them are easily able to look at
the new dream and run with it. Some find it difficult to run with it.
Even those in the former Heritage Bank see the coming of other people to
take their place as a challenge. So, culture is a challenge. We are
working on it. We are having conversation and engagement. At our board
meetings, we discuss. It would be miraculous for anybody to think that
in one year you would be able to get a culture fit for both
organisations. That is one of the core challenges of merger and I am
sure that textbooks are filled with how to deal with such issues. I am
in it and I am managing it.
Am I successful 100 per cent? No! But I
will not give up, I will continue to engage. Now, some people might
argue that maybe the MD understands where he is going, but what about
those next to him? Every organisation has silos. We have had various
engagements. We have gone from place to place, point to point and we
have clear service mandates. We discuss these issues and try to explain
why it is important for us to work hard to make it happen. You can never
win 100 per cent with people. You can try.
Now, each time you want to take a
decision about exiting workers, you have a bad press, so why do you
keep putting forward a dooms day?
Managing crisis is a different thing from
managing a smooth going organisation. Your decisions under pressure and
under crisis are not you as an individual alone. As the MD, you might
have what you want to do, your board might have a view and regulators
might have a view. For a bank, the most important thing is depositors’
safety. So, if the regulators and every other stakeholders believe that
if you continue with your course of action, you may lose depositors and
depositors may lose their money, you have to stop your course of action.
The primary item on your agenda is safety of regulators. It becomes the
most critical item of the decisions you must make. You may not like it.
But it is more important. It is not a private company where you can
wake up, do things and walk away. Whether you are a private or public
company, when it comes to a bank, you are automatically a public
organisation. So, your decisions must always be mindful of that. Your
business school solution might be don’t stop, just go, but if you do
that and there is a run on the bank, the wider implication is financial
system stability. If it is something that you can contain, you might
have to be paying somebody salary for inefficiency.
So, that is what you are doing now?
If we have to deal with salary for
inefficiency, yes! You have to carry a level of inefficiency in other to
protect customers’ deposits. Now, it is a choice that may be difficult
for you to take, but it is an important choice to make. The one person
that can never lose his money is the customer. No matter what you do.
Another issue that keeps
reoccurring is the relationship of your bank with the Senate President.
What is Senator Bukola Saraki’s stake in Heritage Bank?
Yes, from the very first day we opened
Heritage Bank and the press wanted clarity of this, I took out time to
explain our relationship. A group of us, young men and investors, put
money together and approached the owners of Societe Generale Bank
(SGBN). We held a meeting between SGBN, the new investors and the CBN.
And a decision was made to say we the new investors should buy 80 per
cent of the bank. Eleven per cent of the bank was given to depositors
who had indicated their interest to convert their deposits to shares and
the former holders which included Saraki; but it is important to note
that Saraki was not the only owner of that bank.
They were 19 other shareholders. Those
old shareholders (Saraki inclusive) were given 9 per cent of the bank.
My group that came in as new investors, bought 80 per cent with N10.2
billion cash, not N11 billion or N12 billion. That is why when they say I
laundered N12 billion, I was just laughing at them. We paid N10.2
billion for a regional bank. The depositors who had their monies in the
former SGBN wrote to the CBN that they want to convert their monies to
shares and were allotted 11 per cent of the bank. The 9 per cent was
allotted to the former shareholders. Thereafter, we raised new capital
through a private placement that was publicly subscribed to, in which
case we had about 56 new shareholders and the Saraki group did not
subscribe to even one new share.
So, they got diluted down to about 4 per
cent. When we now got into Enterprise Bank, in order to acquire the
bank, we went to the capital market again and raised N11 billion from
the market. That N11 billion was over 100 shareholders. Again, I repeat,
the Saraki group did not subscribe to any new shares. They got diluted
to less than 1 per cent of the bank. And we bought Enterprise Bank. If
you look at the shareholding structure of Heritage bank as at today,
because they did not subscribe to new shares in the two rounds of
capital raising, they now have less than one per cent of the bank.
But whenever people go out there, they
would say it is Saraki’s bank. I have said anybody can go to the
Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), you can come to our office to ask
for the register of shareholders. We have an annual general meeting in
which the register was made public. See, whether there is a pseudo or
anything whatsoever, you can trace. You can take each of the
shareholders and trace them. Saraki is also alive, you can ask him if he
has at any point in time added to his shares at Heritage Bank.
But would I deny that they were the
owners of the bank before we bought it? It is true! I was a secondary
school boy if not less, when SGBN was running. I wasn’t part of it, I am
just an investor. Many investors had tried to buy SGBN over the years,
but we succeeded. If anything, I think we deserve commendation. Rather
than crucify us, we should be given national awards for bringing a dead
bank back to life. I dare people to go do a research of the whole world,
whether a bank had gone down and come back to life. We have done it. If
nothing, as a Nigerian, I am proud of myself. Every press that tries to
run us down tries to call a Saraki into it. The good news is that we
turned SGBN around and people got their monies and are able to transact
their businesses.
Do you regret buying Enterprise Bank?
No! I would never regret buying
Enterprise Bank. Would there be challenges? You may choose to look for
the easy way out. Even if you create a bank, you will still have
challenges once you employ people from other places. Where will I employ
the people? Are they not in the same industry? Same Nigerians, same
people and if they choose not to work hard, same challenges will happen.
So, it is not because of Enterprise Bank, it is the people. And if we,
the people believe in ourselves to say we can make this work, then we
can make it work. I tell my staff that we don’t have any reason to blame
outside, but we have every reason to blame inside. We should take
responsibility and work hard to make it happen.
What is your operation like in
the northern part of the country, because they said over there, you are
being sustained by just one company, Rano Oil, and that customers have
virtually withdrawn their deposits from the bank?
Okay, all my children’s accounts are with
Heritage Bank, including mine. Rano Oil is a customer that trades in
oil and gas. Does he have volume? Yes. Dangote is my customer. I am not
here to begin to list my customers. But there is no, I repeat, and you
can check, every big customer in this country has accounts in almost all
the banks. As long as FX is involved, they put money in every bank and
if you sell them FX, they come, if you don’t sell them FX, they move it
to where the FX is sold. Today, I am happy. Heritage Bank from the
onset, set out to be a retail bank.
The mix of retail to core business
banking is 85:15. So, 85 per cent of my customers are retail customers.
They are the SMEs. We have a youth scheme where we have about 1,500
customers on the NYSC scheme. On the National Youth Council Joint
Programmer, we have over 50,000 customers. That is not Rano! On my SME
platform, I have another 100,000 customers and that is not Rano. So, if
one major customer is being advertised, then he must be satisfied to be
advertised.
We have many branches in the north and
Rano is not in most of them. I have a school feeding programme in Kaduna
state and I have a position in every local government in Kaduna state
as my pilot for the school feeding programme. I have a farming youth
programme in Rivers State that caters for close to 50,000 youths. Are
they Rano? You know it is easy to castigate. If I say I have a million
customers and one of them is the richest, it would always be the
richest. But I am not going to doubt that customer because it is
important to me. Every filling station he has, I have to help him serve
his filling station.
Most of the trucks of Forte Oil were
bought and funded by Heritage Bank, is that Rano? I am not here to name
my customers because of competition. If competition says I have one
customer and in my books I have over one million, I don’t have anything
to prove. I am working towards having a bank where I have 10 million
customers that have only N50,000 each. It is also the basis for my
agency banking, my retail banking and SMEs’ banking. We didn’t hide that
feeling when we said we would help SMEs into a funnel where if we have
50 of them, after two or three years, let’s have one or two of them that
made it to the stock exchange.
And we are committed to that. Today, we
have the Next Titans, where we are looking at the next set of
entreprenuers we are going to build. The winner would have his business
established and we fund it. Meanwhile, the 16 of them that reached final
would also be supported. If we can make just one of them a Dangote, or
even a Rano, I would be happy for it. Rano has paid his dues and if he
trusts me enough to hold his business, I should be happy. My core
business is retail, Rano does retail and I am happy to serve him. There
is a network of supermarket, City Supermarket, which just came up and we
are putting it together from the scratch.
We nurtured from the corner shops and
today it is planted in about five places. We are building it to be what
it can be. We have Shoprite, don’t you want a Nigerian company to
compete against them? We are funding it. The big banks probably are
banking Shoprite and we are saying that our business model is to support
small businesses and grow with them. Today, I beat my chest, if I have
not built a network of customers; at least we have supported 10,000
SMEs. We are worth our salt.
We would grow, face challenges, bad press
or no bad press. The customers that we have built are with us, bad
press or no bad press because they know that when they had challenges
like us, we stood with them. They have said to me that they know that
those information are lies and that they are staying with us. Eight five
per cent of my customers are in the retail space and my ambition is to
make it 95 per cent and when we get there, anybody can publish anything
he likes. If my customers are happy, I am good. It doesn’t have to be
me, Ifie Sekibo as MD, we are building an institution.
I happened to be the person who happened
to start it. I have a tenure and at the end of my tenure, I will be out
and another person will take over as MD. The first MD of FirstBank is
probably dead, but the bank keeps going. Heritage Bank is less than
three years old and you want to put me on same platform of the man that
is over 100 years old. It is not possible! I will make my mistakes. I
have a very professional board and I always tell people to go and check
every member of my board, you won’t see a money bag. We are middle class
persons, but what we all bringing to the table is our knowledge.
That is one thing anybody can take away
from any of us. It is a challenging time, especially when you see those
that you think are your friends are walking away, because of some bad
press, which are all false. Why? They are running to safety. But the
ones you nurtured are standing with you saying that they know it’s all
false. But we are tenacious and even stronger.
We are used to challenges. In fact if
there is any challenge that I have met, Enterprise Bank was one. It is a
challenge because when you swallow something bigger than you, like a
big python, you don’t move from where you are standing and you have to
be strong to do that. The money we used in buying Enterprise Bank was
public knowledge, but they have said all kinds of things. Part of the
process of buying the bank was that you declare where your money was
coming from. It was in black and white, that Afreximbank would give us
certain amount of money and the letters were submitted to the CBN. The
day we signed the bridge financing, it was public knowledge and
Afreximbank’s agreement was that we were going to fund SMEs in Nigeria.
We have changed how SMEs should be looked at. What we see essentially
are the glitches in trying to get to the promised land, but we must get
over it. If we chicken out, then we are not tenacious.
Finally, what message do you have for your customers?
We are strong as a financial institution,
we have very good shareholders’ fund, N65 billion in shareholders’
funds, we are profitable and we would remain profitable. Customers’
deposits are safe and there is nothing wrong with the bank. We meet
every obligation. We are a service company in the business of banking.
The customer is priority and customer safety influences our decision. We
may be young, but we have a large heart and we are destined for great
things.
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