• Jim Ovia’s bank grovels and begs Fayose to cover role in shady transaction
• Ekiti governor destroys bank with stealth and odious politics
By Tola Ogundipe
All the perfumes of France and Arabia cannot wash away the shame and ignominy that has become the lot of Zenith Bank.
Soon after Ekiti governor, Ayodele Fayose made a shocking disclosure about his relationship with the bank, a rank odour pervades the halls and boardrooms of the financial institution, wafting into the streets and dissembling the aura of success, matchless professionalism and invincibility erstwhile characteristic of the bank. For Zenith Bank, the die is cast. The foremost banking institution has waded into stagnant filth. Having waded in too deep, stink and contempt trail the bank and sully its name in the social space and financial business sector.
No sooner than the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) beam its searchlight on Governor Fayose than he implicated Zenith Bank. The EFCC had on Monday, frozen the three personal accounts of the governor and one belonging to his company, Spotless Investments, in the course of its investigations into N4.7billion Fayose allegedly received from the Office of the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, during his election campaign in 2014. Initially, when the EFCC started closing in on him, Fayose begged Zenith Bank to save him but when it became clear that he was going down, Governor Fayose, like a sinking man, decided to drag down Zenith Bank with him.
Governor Fayose disclosed recently, that his election into the Ekiti State House was bankrolled by the erstwhile reputable bank. By his disclosure, Fayose shattered to smithereens, in a single moment, Zenith Bank’s hard-earned reputation as Nigeria’s most successful and solvent new generation bank. In a swift reaction, Zenith Bank denied bankrolling the Ekiti State governor’s election.
However, soon after the bank denied Fayose’s claims, its senior executives trooped to his residence to plead with him. But rather than be a gentleman by shielding the purpose of their visit, Fayose, in a vulgar, dirty plot, released pictures taken during his meeting with the bank’s staff.
In the pictures, one of the bank’s managers is seen kneeling before Fayose, apparently to plead with him. Like dull actors who have forgotten their parts in a heated drama and are out to full disgrace, the Zenith Bank senior executives wore forlorn looks on their faces.
Sitting and kneeling before Fayose, they cut a shameful portrait of recalcitrant underperformers, desperate to hide and preserve the ignominy of failure in their oft misconceived role as a global banker. Soon after the pictures went viral on the social media, Fayose issued a statement claiming the bank’s management had come to beg him.
Zenith Bank’s debacle with Fayose no doubt substantiates the popular belief that, like most other banks, it’s operational philosophy is driven to seek out and make money at all cost; the bank cares very little about integrity, corporate governance and ethics. Having attained notoriety as a banking institution with a knack for sending young women into corporate prostitution in the name of chasing deposits, Zenith Bank’s disgraceful dalliance with Fayose further substantiates it’s lack of ethics and professionalism. The discomforting silence of the bank’s management over the incident has been variously analysed as an admission of guilt thus the bank’s declining reputation within and outside local and international business circuits.
It is even more instructive to note that the current governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, was the former managing director of Zenith Bank, which makes the story even more embarrassing.
Apparently, in choosing to deal with Fayose, pundits noted that the bank’s management underestimated how rabid and uncivilized the man can get. These are surely not the best of times for the Jim Ovia-led new generation bank. Just a few weeks ago, the bank’s senior management occupied respectable positions in the hearts and perception of the people but at the moment, the bank and its elite breed of directors has been reduced to a sad, sorry excuse for a commercial bank.
