REVELATION OF CBN’S DISTRUSTS OF NIGERIAN BANKS

They say the Nigerian banking industry has some of the finest brains in the whole of the black African continent. Nobody should dispute this, if those white goons of the departed apartheid regime had not stayed longer than required, those South African banks that strut around telling who cares to listen of their grand size all would have paled into insignificance.

Okay, concede size and operating finesse to the South Africans, for Nigerians, our banks are getting bigger so much that account books sniffing sheriffs at the Nigerian Accounting Standard Banks, would informally tell you that it’s a most exerting task reviewing the books of the banks.

One tells of how some banks usually play the smart card on auditors:

“The bankers know that auditors can only work on figures provided for them, so besides traducing the figures, they may even confuse the entire process for the auditors. This they do by suddenly changing accounting software.

“We have seen banks that were using Globus, a banking accounting package, over the best part of a year only to suddenly change their software to Finnacle weeks before the external auditors assume. What the auditors meet on ground is certain to be absolute chaos because of the incompatibility of these two softwares. Eventually, the auditors are left to the mercy of the figures the banks wished them to see and treat.

You won’t believe which institution holds the banks in greatest suspicion? The Central Bank of Nigeria!  It is said that the CBN is so circumspect of banks’ figures that it makes a tradition of slashing the figures presented under some account headings. For instance, the CBN has over the past years made it a rule to slash any figure presented by banks under its total assets column by 70 per cent because the CBN believes that such figures are always over-inflated.

A case of connyman dies connyman bury am. (a dead dubious person would be buried by an equally dubious person)