I was on my way to Central London this morning when I got a call from my superbly enthusiastic and talented Associate Producer - Rosemary Ajayi, explaining to me in a rushed tone that the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria is in town and will be making a presentation to the UK Finance sector at a very cosy and classy hotel, just behind Liverpool Street Station.
I had been talking to Mr. Femi Babafemi, the spokesperson of EFCC earlier with regards having a telephone interview with him on the Saturday morning "Africa This Week" which I present on BEN Television Sky 184 and he had agreed to feature on the show, which was quite exciting considering the controversy generated as a result of EFCC's pursuit of Bank CEOs and Directors that were sacked by the CBN Governor.
My first thought on getting the information from Rosemary was to try and get the CBN Governor to accept my invitation to be interviewed live on my TV show for Saturday. I headed straight for Liverpool Street, arrived about 15 minutes late for the presentation and sat through the rest of the very intelligent and enlightening information that Mr. Lamido Sanusi put forward. I have never seen the Governor prior to today's event, except for the photograph on websites and never heard him speak before.
I was quite impressed by the measured, soft-spoken, and very eloquent speech/presentation by the Governor, I have not heard this kind of quality presentation from someone in senior public position from Nigeria in recent times, so I found this quite refreshing.
There was a truly diverse audience at the event and this was obvious during question time as the questions came from senior banking executives from Deutche Bank, Morgan & Stanley, JP Morgan, BBC reporter, Africa Confidential, and Financial Times to name a few, and the Governor gave detailed response to all the questions, with the exception of two questions which he deflected to the two Deputy Governors flanking him on the high table.
At the end of the event, I had a quick interview with the CBN Governor. I asked him how much has been recovered since August 14 announcement of the sacking of the CEOs of the 5 Banks affecting by the poorly serviced/non-performing loans, he was not able to give concise amount but stated that Oceanic Bank has recovered about N13Billion, while Intercontinental Bank has recovered a bit more than that.
When I quizzed him on the issue of loans by banks to the government departments that have not been servicing or paying back, as well as allegation by a couple of the banks that they have put in money into the energy and oil sector, Governor Lamido Sanusi's response was that loans the sacked CEOs claimed were given to government depts and energy sector which are poorly serviced constitute a small percentage of the Billions of Dollars that have been described by his office as non-performing loans.
I kept at him to give me an indication of what is the size of the small percentage that he was talking about, and eventually he said its just under 5%, which means over 90% of the billions have gone to "powerful and highly placed individuals and organisations", using the words of Governor Sanusi. He clearly believes that once these individuals are subjected to the pressure they are now under they will have to respect the laws of the land by paying up. He chuckled and explained that even some of those who claim they are going to court to seek redress for being exposed will have gone back to the banks to pay their debt.
I asked a tricky question on the share price fixing allegations against Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Sanusi seemed to have chosen his words carefully and stated emphatically, that he will not indulge in rumours and unsubstantiated allegations about shares price-fixing. He said that as far as the CBN is aware, there are no price-fixing confirmed.
I will be taking him up on that again tomorrow when he features on my Saturday morning show "Africa This Week" on BEN Television Sky Channel 184 from 10a.m. to 11a.m.
I expect the full interview today to be on BEN Television tonight, with the Governor responding to my questions on state of Nigerian economy, the growth the CBN believes will be driven by the agriculture sector, the expectation of improvement in electricity that will drive SME growth and more.
See why I said the interview was interesting, just watch it tonight as appetiser and then look out for the full 1 Hours interview that's coming live on saturday... phew... that's me done for the day... :-)
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