By Amaka Agwuegbo

Barely a week after the sudden resignation of its Managing Director/Chief Executive, Mr. Simon Akinteye, Integrated Microfinance Bank Plc (IMFB) closed its doors to customers last week to escape its irate depositors.

Investigation revealed that last week, a huge number of depositors stormed the bank to demand for their money. But, knowing that the bank lacked the financial resources to meet the depositors’ demand, the management of the bank hurriedly appealed to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to allow it to temporarily close shop to customers.

The apex bank, it was gathered, in sympathy with the bank’s plight granted its request giving it till next month to open to customers for business.

Confirming this to Vanguard, the Deputy Director, Other Financial Institutions Department, CBN, Mr. Femi Fabamwo, said that though it is not proper for a licensed microfinance bank to temporarily shut down, the CBN, however, granted IMFB permission to temporarily close shop due to the peculiarity of their problems.

He explained that the short-term liquidity issues of Integrated was heightened when they were besieged by irate customers who wanted to collect their money, prompting the CBN to grant them permission to close shop temporarily.

“It is not proper, but the case of Integrated MFB is peculiar because they called our attention to the problems they were having and we permitted them to temporarily close its doors to its customers to enable them put their house in order,” Fabamwo said.

Fabamwo pointed out that IMFB is still in operation but are not attending to customers so as to have the needed time to resuscitate the bank by getting investors to make it vibrant.

He assured depositors on the safety of their funds, stating that the funds are insured by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC.

Established in 2006, IMFB within two years became the leading microfinance bank. It became the prime choice of multilateral and local lending institutions and also a multiple award-winning company.

Some of the awards won by IMFB include ‘IMFB 5 Diamonds Award by Mix Market Platform 2009’ ‘Crystal of Excellence Award by CICA 2009’ ‘The Best Microfinance Bank in Nigeria by the Central Bank of Nigeria’ ‘The best MFB in SME Financing West Africa, 2007’ ‘The best MFB in Nigeria by the Federal Ministry of Finance & NTA’ ‘The first MFB in Nigeria with a State License Status’ among numerous others.

But last week when Vanguard visited the once busy and bubbling corporate headquarters of the bank, it was under lock and key with the security guards refraining customers from entering the bank’s premises.

Vanguard gathered that the short-term liquidity problem has forced the bank to close go.
Sources close to the bank said that the sacking of the staff aggravated the problem as the aggrieved staff instigated the bank’s customers to close their accounts. This led to panic withdrawals as a lot of them were scared of losing their lives’ savings.

It would be recalled that in Kano and some other states, hundreds of customers of IMFB have staged peaceful protests at the premises of the bank over the bank’s inability to meet their withdrawal requests, leading to the burning of one of the bank’s business offices.

Vanguard learnt that most of the customers had approached the bank with their withdrawal requests ranging from N10,000 and above, only to be told that ‘no one can withdraw above N3,000’.

However, two weeks ago, the bank announced the resignation of Akinteye and the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Danjuma Ibrahim, who was the former Regional Director, Northern Operations and Deputy Chief Executive Officer.

Also, former Divisional Director, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), Mr. Chimaobi Agwu, was appointed the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Deputy Chief Executive of the bank.

In a statement made available to Vanguard, the Board of Directors of IMFB explained that the resignation of Akinteye was necessitated by the current efforts made by the Board to raise fresh funds from both institutional and private investors in order to reinvigorate the bank, stating that the Board had concluded arrangements to inject over N1bn from internal sourcing and through partnership with two foreign investors to boost the bank’s capital base and expand its business operations.