Sanusi sent a shockwave through the corporate establishment in August and October when he injected funds into nine banks and sacked the top managers of eight of them, saying lax governance had left them so weakly capitalised they posed a systemic risk.
Nigeria’s anti-corruption police have filed charges ranging from recklessly granting loans to share price manipulation against many of the executives, including members of a business aristocracy which had long been seen as untouchable.
“You cannot be a good regulator if you are hob-nobbing with the operators. Bank MDs (managing directors) were always in the (presidential) villa,” Sanusi told an African stock exchange conference in the capital Abuja.
“How many regulators can discipline the CEOs of banks who were friends to the president? Bank CEOs were sponsoring politicians and political parties. So we have to address the culture of corruption,” he said.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have a president who supports what I’m doing.”
The 1.14 trillion naira ($7.6 billion) in bad loans run up by the first five banks bailed out alone is roughly equivalent to the combined annual income of the poorest 20 million people in Africa’s most populous nation, who live on around $1 a day.
