By Rotimi Fasan
THE last few years have been transformative for Nigerian banks. Beginning from the period under Charles Soludo to the last three years when Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has practically gripped the banking sector by the neck and shaken it out of slumber, Nigerian banks have not remained the same.

While Soludo appeared to have focussed attention on initiating fiscal policies with effects on the entire Nigerian economic system, well beyond the immediate bounds of the banking sector, Sanusi has taken the reforms forward with particular emphasis on how those entrusted with maintaining the health of our banks have carried out their tasks in total selfishness to the utter detriment of the banks.

Being a banker with insider knowledge of how our banks have been managed, Sanusi appeared to have made up his mind well before his appointment as Governor of Central Bank that a major, if not the major problem of Nigerian banks, is the unethical practices by the managements of these banks

Unethical insider practices that reflected poor governance issues that virtually brought Nigerian banks down to their knees constituted the immediate concerns of Sanusi who went after erstwhile colleagues with a zeal that had left many, including many of these banks’ thieves, not chiefs as they had been known, complaining that the Governor had personal scores to settle with them.

That charge against Sanusi, specifically of executing a campaign of personal vendetta, has not been convincingly proven. What Nigerians have, on the contrary, come to realise is that beneath the glamorous lifestyles of our top bankers lies such filth as should fetch many of them long years behind bars.

The steps Sanusi took would lead to what could be described as the beheading of our leading banks with many in the top management, men and women who ran these banks like personal fiefdoms established for worse than ulterior motives, being sent home like erring pupils or to jail  for criminal acts.

Several of these banks are yet to recover from the onslaught from their former managers. The bailout extended to the ailing banks by government has not been completely successful as a couple of them are now obliged to be taken over by their more successful competitors.

After such traumatic experiences in the hands of their managers, the last thing our banks need is the new kind of siege that has been directed against them by armed bandits. Nigerian banks have never been more fortified than they are presently.

Not only are customers required to switch off their phones even as metal detectors are put in place to discover violators of this regulation, customers have to pass through metal doors that look like armoured cubicles. A visit to any of our banks therefore is like a call at a fortress.

The precautions you’re obliged to observe leave you in no doubt that you’re a suspected robber until you leave the vicinity of the banks without pulling a gun at those inside. Customers look around themselves with trepidation, not sure of what might happen next.

Every move is deliberate and considered in terms of how it might be interpreted by others. But in spite of all these, Nigerian banks are today some of the most insecure places to go to. A great irony for an environment that is under all sorts of surveillance devices, including armed security whose presence could be more intimidating than reassuring.

In truth, there are fewer and fewer places that people could go to in Nigeria without fear of some catastrophe in this age when bomb throwing has become the pastime of many- there are indeed few places to visit without the fear that one might be exposing oneself to danger.

But our banks take the cake, increasingly, among the most volatile spaces open to the public. News of bank robberies is now daily fare. These are often brutal, barbaric attacks executed with the aim for maximum devastation and much too often those who end up on the casualty list are innocents who never imagined that a place of apparently harmless business like a bank could turn out to be a slaughter house.

Many times too victims of bank attacks are mere passersby, people going about their own business with no intention of going into a bank. Deaths such as this are among the most mindless to be seen on our streets. The brazenness with which bank robberies are carried out these days is another source of wonder. The robbers don’t bother to call at night.

They go about their business in broad daylight and, sometimes, would have written to their targets weeks before they call like an invading army. Which is to say that they come in groups of between four and five or more men and women with weapons of war, ranging from assault rifles, machine guns to grenades.

They rob not one or two banks but an entire street lined with banks without hindrance. Walls, doors and safes are blown out military-fashion without any one standing in their way. They take their time and, in fact, more than their time as they seem to dare anyone to stop them. And indeed nobody does.

Not even the security agent who have a way of arriving but only after the worst has happened and the perpetrators gone. Then would innocent bystanders and others unfortunate to be around be apprehended.

It’s in Nigeria with our crude policing style, without means of effective communication to say nothing of aerial support for agents supposedly fighting crime on the ground- it’s only here that robbers still go around in the 21st Century to rob and kill in this crude manner while we all watch and wring our hands.

But in all this customers suffer with nobody to plead their case. It’s all too common sight today to see customers locked out in the sun at bank entrances. There is usually no meaningful explanation for all this other than the fact that it is the crude way banks have now devised to fight crime.

Upon learning of robbery in nearby areas or sensing robbery, bank doors are quickly slammed shut and longsuffering customers are made to bear the can while bankers strut around in air conditioned banking halls. Sometimes such shutouts occur in days consecutively.

Certainly these cannot continue. Banks, while turning the searchlight on their own staff and others working inside that might be aiding armed criminals in their acts, would need to demonstrate that they respect their customers. Having endured the criminal fleecing that comes with the imposition of alike sensible and insensible commissions and loss of deposits to thieving executives, it would be double jeopardy for bank customers to be denied access to the little funds in their names when they need them.