• EFCC probe plunge banking czars in hysteria
• More shocking revelations to come as senior bank chiefs are found complicit
• Culprits visit native doctors and spiritualists for protection
Men toss away their conscience in pursuit of money. Eventually, they become beacons of dishonour by their pitch dark exploits. Like the proverbial turncoat that betrayed his people’s hopes soon after he was entrusted with the wheel of their collective destinies, senior bank chiefs in the country perpetuated the worst forms of treachery against their customers and the Nigerian state during the immediate past administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, according to The Capital findings.
The former government no doubt enhanced the capacities of the bank chiefs to perpetrate grievous acts of fraud and financial terrorism against the country. As the country groaned under severe economic conditions, the bank chiefs reveled in the secure and illicit protection offered them by several criminal masterminds and collaborators that lurked in the shadows and the corridors of power, like the darkest of creatures or stowaways in hiding.
Flouting all banking ethics, they perpetrated fraud and gross acts of economic terrorism that persistently put their poor, helpless clients and citizenry at the receiving end. But as it is often said, ‘Everything that has a beginning must have an end;’ since the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari in power, things have never being the same for the shady bank chiefs. Mr. President’s anti-corruption campaign has so far, produced shocking results. At the directive of the presidency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has unearthed shocking truths about the depth of the previous administration corruption and the complicity of the nation’s private sector – the banking sector in particular in the fledgling rot.
Since the $115 slush fund scandal broke out in the country’s business and social space, senior bank chiefs in the country have been running from pillar to post, burrowing like heat-maddened rabbits, from one hutch to the other, in search of a miraculous lifeline and refuge from the reach of the EFCC.
Indeed, crimes of which a people are ashamed constitute their real history. The same is true of Nigerian bank chiefs.
As you read, there is nothing stable in the world of these senior bank executives. Chaos pervades the halls and hallowed boardrooms of Nigeria’s biggest banks like nemesis to castle trolls. Since the $115 slush fund scandal broke out, most senior bank chiefs have been living in fear of arrest and prosecution. The fund which was allegedly used to bribe INEC officials en route the last presidential elections was traced to major players in the country’s oil and gas sector including Leno Oil boss, Laitan Adesanya.
Soon after the EFCC commenced investigations into the scandal, the anti-graft agency arrested the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Fidelity Bank Plc, Nnamdi Okonkwo, and some officials for allegedly receiving the $115m slush money from former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke.
Since Okonkwo’s arrest, several bank chiefs and oil magnates in the country have been running helter-skelter to protect their names and cover their flanks, particularly those that were involved in one shady deal or more with former public officers that served with ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.
As a desperate measure, many of the country’s bank chiefs, whose identities would be revealed in due course, have resorted to the use of native doctors and other spiritualists to seek spiritual protection and diabolic support.
