The President and Chairman of Council of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, Prof. Segun Ajibola, says there is a need for financial institutions to return to the basic canons of lending in order to mitigate rising bad loan crisis in the banking industry.
He spoke in Lagos during the launch of his two books titled, “Lending and the Nigerian banks: A practitioner’s experience’ and “The structure of Nigerian economy: 1960-2017.”
Ajibola said, “For sanity to return to bank lending in Nigeria, thanks though to recent regulatory stance, we must return to the basics. The simple rules of credit codified as canons of lending, Cs of credit, etc. can only be ignored at a lender’s peril.
“I have captured the major deviations between what it is and what it ought to be in this book. My findings show clearly a near-total disrespect for the basic rules of credit in our clime. I watched helplessly how risk management was relegated to the background.”
He explained, “I made enemies out of the system by canvassing adherence to the rules of the game. I listened with pains and anguish how a preference for returns at the expense of capital was rationalised. I listened to friends who had the same tales of woes. The examples in the book were borne out of years of field experience, savouring the good, the bad and the ugly sides of credit.”
The CIBN president maintained that whenever a bank or a lending institution ran into bad loan crisis, all the parties involved in the approval should be called to question regardless of whether the person was still in the system or not.
The Chief Consultant, B. Adedipe Associates, Dr. Biodun Adedipe, who reviewed one of the books, described the 199-page book as a true academic pursuit that also found relevance in banking practice.
According to Adedipe, the book is an addition to the stock of knowledge and it has practical relevance by way of numerous concepts simplified and experiences shared to guide practising bankers into right decision and judgment.
An expert, Prof. Wale Tella, while giving kudos to the author, lamented that although the structure of Nigerian economy was one of the compulsory courses at the undergraduate level, only two of such books had been produced in the last 40 years with an interval of 18 years.
He however hoped that the book will be reviewed every 5years to safe students and other researchers the agony of how to get relevant information.