By Etim Etim

It was the venerated writer, Chimanda Adichie, who first warned us against the destructive influences of a single story in her now famous 2009 TED talk. Many did not take her seriously and a lot more probably did not know the import of her lecture. She described a single story as an overly simplistic and generalised perception of a person, place or thing; a narrative that presents only one perspective, repeated again and again. Chimanda asserts that the danger of a single story is that it can result in perspectives based on stereotypes.

Since the tragic deaths of my boss, brother and friend, Dr. Herbert Wigwe, with his wife and son in that air crash over two weeks ago, many Nigerians have been astounded by the torrents of single stories on Herbert dredged up and circulated on some social media platforms. The depth of people’s cruelty and depravity in spawning these falsehoods against an innocent man even in moments of immense tragedy and pain is unfathomable. They are out to inflict pain by fabricating lies and malicious propaganda against the dead. Their intention is to destroy the memory of the dead banker, inflict pain on his aged parents, and business partners and damage the reputation of the businesses he left behind.

The most popular of these stories is about the acquisition of Intercontinental Bank by Access Bank in 2012. In public, the purveyors claim that Intercontinental was a healthy bank when it was bought and that the then CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, had orchestrated the sale as a favour to his friends. But in reality, these people are pained that Intercontinental is no longer available for them to plunder and steal from, and so, they resort to dissemination of malevolent attacks against the late Wigwe and his partner, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, who is obviously in mourning.

I was a senior management staff of Access Bank when the Intercontinental acquisition happened, and so I know about the transaction very well. In 2008, the CBN conducted a stress test of all banks in the country and came up with a verdict that some banks were healthy, others not so healthy and a few very distressed. Intercontinental was severely distressed and was heading for a collapse. A further examination of the bank revealed a clear pattern of insider abuse and high-level fraud perpetrated by its directors and some members of senior management. The frauds were so massive that the bank’s shareholders’ funds were completely eroded, and its capital was in the negative.

In 2009, the CBN sacked Mr. Akingbola and the Board of the bank and replaced it with an interim board as part of the remediation and rescue plan for the bank. The interim board was mandated to fashion out a recapitalisation plan for the bank. But in late 2011, about two years after Akingbola and his board were sacked, the CBN put up the bank for sale when it was clear that a recapitalization was not feasible. In early 2012, the CBN approved Access Bank’s offer to take over the bank. In fact, even after the acquisition, Access Bank management discovered ”a far deeper hole” in the bank’s balance sheet than was previously revealed by the CBN’s examination and subsequent audit reports and due diligence.

Etim, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja