Mr. Boniface Okezie, president, Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, has called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to regulate the banking industry with caution and human face.
According to Okezie, the manner of regulation in the sector tends to be tilting towards over-regulation and coercion rather than collaboration between the CBN and the bankers.
Okezie who stated this in a chat with BusinessWorld in Lagos noted that the CBN must consider the fate of shareholders before carrying out any reform that will be devastating to their investments in the banks.
Also, Mr. Sunny Nwosu, president of Nigerian Shareholders Solidarity Association charged the CBN to be consistent with policy formulation, eliminating the culture where one person formulates a policy only for another person to change it.
According to Nwosu, policy consistency will create long term economic stability that will impact the lives of the average Nigerian.
Meanwhile experts have stated that the CBN should be blamed for the crisis that enveloped the banking sector after the audit test carried out by Sanusi Lamido, governor of the CBN.
This is because the CBN has been in charge of auditing the banks before the audit test was carried out.
Mr. Sonnie Ayere, chief executive officer of Dunn Loren Merrifield Ltd who made this assertion noted that the CBN cannot be entirely exonerated from the crisis that has enveloped the banking sector, stressing that it was the apex regulatory body of the banking sector.
Ayere indicated that it was the same CBN that was auditing banks that came out to announce that some banks were distressed.
He therefore called on the central bank to sanitise itself even as it goes about sanitising the banking sector.
Also Mr. Femi Ekundayo, former president, Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), called for a genuinely collective and consensual approach to policy formulation in the Nigerian financial sector.
According to him, although change could occur whenever it is found necessary, consistency, rather than policy somersault, should be the order of the day in policy formulation for the financial sector.
He noted that succeeding regimes at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have demonstrated great divergence from the policies of their immediate predecessors pointing out that in most cases, this radical policy somersault had come up barely a few weeks after the predecessor had made Nigerians to believe that the prevailing policy, as at the time, was the best for the nation.
He called for a collaborative financial regulation framework that allow effective inputs from all regulatory agencies to stem the tide of inter-sector shocks given that all segments of the financial system are interrelated.
He added that banks should also de-emphasise competition and move on to collaboration in tune with the global trend while consistently improving on their operations to meet the yearnings of the banking public.
“The Nigerian banking system needs to do more to anticipate, prevent and absorb shocks; to exhibit dependability and ability to stand the test of time. The system must be seen as consistently improving.
This is the test of resilience,” Ekundayo said.
He commended recent initiatives by the financial sector regulators including the extension of deposit insurance to Primary Mortgage Institutions and Microfinance Banks as well as the setting up of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (Amcon).