Barely three weeks after the embattled chairman of Special Presidential Panel on Recovery of Government Funds and Property, Barr Okoi Obono-Obla, gave a clear indication that plans are on to recover the over N620bn dashed out to about nine to 14 banks between 2006 and 2008, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), is yet to tell Nigerian anything on recovering the fund.
It would be recalled that within the period in review, a number of commercial banks were rescued with Nigerian commonwealth doled out from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
However, more than 10 years after, there has not any genuine move by the apex bank to begin the recovery of multibillion taxpayers’ money.
Rather, recently, the NDIC announced that it has paid N11.50bn to depositors of failed banks and recovered only N28bn debt.
Managing Director/Chief Executive of NDIC, Mr Umaru Ibrahim, had on Tuesday said a total of N11.50 billion had been paid to depositors, creditors, shareholders and other stakeholders of closed financial institutions as at December 31, 2017.
He also said the sum of N368.43 million was recovered by the corporation from debtors of failed banks during the period under review, bringing the total recoveries to N28.84 billion to date. The NDIC boss further noted that N21.85 billion had so far been realised from the sale of physical assets of closed banks as at 2017.
NDIC also hinted that depositors of 16 deposit money banks (DMBs) in-liquidation have so far been fully paid all the deposit balances they had in their accounts at the closure of the financial institutions as at 2017.
In his remarks at the NDIC Special Day at the ongoing 13th Abuja International Trade Fair, Ibrahim announced the successful conclusion of the adoption of bridge bank as a failure resolution option in 2011 by the corporation to address problems of the then three failing banks.
Business Hilights recalls that NDIC recently announced the upgrading of Polaris Bank as a bridge bank to full banking entity after CBN injected another Nigerian commonwealth of N786bn without any time given for the recovery.