The altered landscape of Nigeria's banking industry occasioned by the hiccups of the 2009 bank reforms...
... evidently resulted in the whittling down of the professional worth of most bank employees as many of them had to take the exit route in the processes. Additionally, it disrobed them of the perceived 'high net-worth individuals' placed on them when the banking sector experienced unusual boom a couple of years ago.
The development confirms experts' belief that the liberalization of the banking industry succeeded in making present-day bank employees less bankers. BH findings reveal that majority of disengaged bank workers delved into unconventional territories that are quite alien to what they used to do as employees of financial service institutions where they held sway and possessed the image of egg-heads and engine-rooms of financial operations. The findings were the outcome of recent survey(in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Owerri) on what disengaged bankers do for survival which revealed that most of them have become “ordinary traders” in the strive to make both ends meet; while a few managed to run structured enterprise that employs only themselves and, in some cases, one or two helping hands.
According to Eze Emma Nwosu, former Managing Director/CEO of now defunct ACB International Bank Plc, the liberalization of the banking sector was carried out in such a way that the industry was not only over-bloated but the operators carried themselves in a larger-than-life manner that overlooked the quality of human capital. When a down-turn occurred in the economy, it became obvious that those who were regarded as professionals were really not one, as the industry was carrying excess luggage of manpower that lacked the required professionalism. Again, he observed, “the bank workers were misled into believing that all that matters in banking was deposit mobilization, and as far as one meets one's targets no further human development is necessary, that is why virtually none of them hardly functions in the financial services sector after disengagement.”
Of the 100 disengaged bank workers selected for the survey through random sampling, only 3 were found to be doing finance-related businesses. The survey was conducted through direct contact and information gathered from 'volunteered' sources (those who accepted to make enquires on behalf of BH and those to supplied information about friends and relatives familiar to them). Of the 100 covered, 35 were male, while 65 were female. Five (5) held top management positions, 9 were in General Manager (GM) positions, while 10 and 11 worked last as Deputy General Managers (DGM) and Assistant General Managers (AGM) respectively. Sixteen (16) were senior managers (SM) at the time of disengagement, while 20 were Managers/Unit Heads. (Twenty-five) 25 were Officers of different categories; 4 were Junior Officers.
In terms of years of service, 18 fall within 0-5 years category; 26 into 6-10 while 12 fall into 11-15 years of service. Sixteen (16) fall within 16-20 years; 20 years and above accounted for 28 disengaged bankers. Only 15 of them had worked in rural bank branches. Thirty-four (34) had post-graduate qualifications, 52 had first degrees, 9 HND and 5 OND/NCE. They all attended various in-service courses.
The survey showed that 15 studied banking/finance related courses (Accounting, Banking, Finance, Economics, Business Administration). Forty-one (41) read Sciences while 31 studied Social Sciences/Arts/Education. Eight (8) and 5 studied Information & Communication Technology (ICT) and Law respectively.
By age bracket, 16 were below 25; 10 fall within 21-25 category while 12 responded from 26-30 years age bracket. Twenty-two (22) fall within 31-35; 36-40 had 14 disengaged bankers while 41-45 and above 45 recorded 11 and 15 ex-bank workers respectively.
By post-disengagement occupation, 3 were engaged in consultancy services to Micro-finance outfits, 63 were engaged in trading (buying and selling), 10 in teaching, 5 in transportation, 2 in estate management, 11 in agric-related business and 6 in Gospel Ministry.
Akin Ademola, a Lagos-based Human Resource Consultant told BHthat what happened in the banking industry was an exposure of the real value of the bankers and a confirmation that they had been over-rated and their worth over-boated because it happened at a time of what he called industry madness. “Banking is a human activity; you use human beings to achieve given objectives which create value to the organization or to the industry or to the nation, depending on where you want to define the boundary. What happened over the years is that there was too much free money in the system and the industry had to find a means of re-distributing it to their members and that is why you can see a banker riding big car, living unrealistic expensive life because the money is there, not that he made input that was commensurate with what he earned.”
Mr Chuks Nnaji, a Human Resource and Labour Economics Specialist told BH in a telephone interview that the worth of a worker is measured by the relevance of his contribution to the overall objectives of the organization that hired his services for specific functions at any given time. “The fact that the bankers were sent away means that the overall objectives of the organization for which they were engaged were no longer being achieved through them; and that is not to the benefit of the organization. That they were sacked in large number means that they were no longer relevant to the system and could not be used to achieve the overall objective. They had lost in value.”
A disengaged female bank employee who worked in a distressed bank that has now been acquired by another bank told BH that she did routine job all the years she served in the bank and that the job she did was never challenging. “I come to work in the morning, put on my system, do the same thing I have been doing, continue from where someone has stopped; another colleague continued from where I stopped. Every quarter, I receive a mail that huge sum has been credited to my account as bonus, or profit share, or something.” She said, “there is always a name for money doled out to the staff and it comes big and often times unexpected; this is apart from your regular monthly salary which is of course guaranteed, stable and on time.” This ex-bank worker, a university graduate, now sells jewelleries as an itinerant trader.
This confirms Nwosu's views: “Banking is a process thing. The type of skills it equips you is not the skill for independent survival. It is not the first-rate entrepreneurial training. This is why you see many bankers, when they leave banking they would find it difficult to fit into any other occupation of their own because banking is a controlled process in a controlled environment which is inter-dependent. Banking work is so organized that hardly would anyone start something and finish it without another person intervening or cross-checking his work. So, when a banker leaves that process-controlled environment, he is almost like fish out of water.”
But is the value of the Nigerian banker diminishing? “Of course, there is diminishing value in the worth of our bankers today,” stated Eze Emma Nwosu, former Managing Director/CEO of now defunct ACB International Bank Plc. In an exclusive interview granted BH last week, Eze Nwosu explained that the turmoil in the industry has exposed the hollow standard of the Nigerian bankers who before now were dressed in borrowed robes and assumed to be bigger than what they really worth. Giving graphic details of the misfortune that has befallen the bankers in the worsening conditions of the reforms, Nwosu attributed the abnormally to the wrong approach adopted by banks in competing with each other to over-reach themselves in greed and profit.
Renowned Economist, Dr Boniface Chizea believes the lay-offs do not amount to loss in the intrinsic value of the banker because the mergers and acquisitions that occurred in the process of the implementing bank reforms affected the employment capacity of the banks that could no longer carry excess luggage in terms of more hands that are no longer required.
In an exclusive interview through the mail, Chizea told BH: “There cannot be a loss in intrinsic value of the banker; albeit today's banker because he lost his job! If the banks are witnessing shot gun marriages and are being forced to go into merger arrangements that will not cause a loss in value of the average banker. What is happening is that the banks that are coming together do not envisage business opportunities of the right amount to continue to carry the labour force they have inherited as a result of the combination and therefore there is massive retrenchment.” He believes the skill is still there and that all the bankers need to do is to find ways of applying it. “Now those bankers made redundant might for some time not find a job but the well trained banker is a well rounded person that except he is not entrepreneurial he should be able to start some business on his own.”
According to Nwosu, “There are certain things a banker should know at the entry level, at the supervisory level, at the managerial level and at the executive level. They are no more laying emphasis on those rudiments again. You see somebody who enters the bank, he meets his targets in deposit again and again, before you know it he is a GM (General Manager) or an AGM (Assistant General Manager), or an ED (Executive Director). And before you know it, probably, he is an MD (Managing Director).”
The former bank CEO noted, “because of the way the grooming has depreciated, it affects them and makes the matter even worse. You see, before, when you come out and say 'I am an AGM,' and you analyze the economy or a typical transaction, for instance, everybody in the audience will bow. Today, you have someone who says he is an AGM, he does not understand the implications of the new tax regime, the monetary policy decisions, or even certain macroeconomic fundamentals, changes in the economy, the new exchange rate, depreciation of the Naira, and so on. These days, all he knows is that he can mobilize credit ...”
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