The bank officer as a parasite
By Levi Obijiofor

HERE is today's quiz. If you were asked to rank the following people, in terms of unethical conduct and dishonesty, which of them would top your list: bank manager, police officer, army/naval/air force officer, minister of religion, barrister-at-law, medical doctor, solicitor, journalist, construction engineer, nurse/midwife, general contractor, politician, teacher, trader, carpenter, chef, newspaper editor, newspaper publisher, magazine publisher, accountant, advertising company executive, public relations manager, pickpocket, prostitute and driver?

The list is not exhaustive but chances are that many Nigerians would pick the pickpocket or prostitute as the most unethical and dishonest person. If my prediction is right, that choice would have been made based on public perception which in itself would have been informed by anecdotal evidence. As experience in Nigeria and other countries has shown, person perception is often far from reality.

When a similar study was conducted in Australia in 1996, the outcome was a rude shock to everyone. The study requested respondents to rank various professions in terms of how they were perceived for ethics and honesty. Newspaper journalists were ranked second from the bottom. This study revealed for the first time a terrible image problem for Australian journalists, despite the essential role that journalists play in the society. In this particular poll, newspaper journalists were ranked very low - they managed to beat used-car salespersons. A mere seven per cent of the people surveyed ranked newspaper journalists as "very high" or "high" in terms of ethical conduct and honesty. Follow up studies have been conducted since that time but the image of Australian newspaper journalists has not improved significantly. In the perception of the Australian public, newspaper journalists are still dishonest and unethical. You can read or interpret the results any way you can. But the underlying message is that Australian newspaper journalists are not thought of very highly by the public.

Each society places a different value on its institutions. Consider the following. In December 2000, the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, regarded as the world's largest selling newspaper, asked 2000 people to list the institution they trusted most. The prime minister was ranked last. That said a lot about the extent of confidence the Japanese people placed on their politicians. Still in December 2000, a Gallup Opinion Poll conducted in the United States about the most trusted institutions showed that the military were ranked top and television was ranked 14th.

Australia is not Nigeria. I do not believe that a similar poll here to that conducted in Australia would produce a similar result in Nigeria in terms of the image of newspaper journalists. What the studies in Australia reveal, apart from engraving in everyone's memory a contentious league of ethical/honest and unethical/dishonest professions, is the extent to which public perception of professions or crafts differs from society's assumptions and the reality on the ground. In Nigeria the public image of journalists is yet to be tested officially through a public opinion survey. But for bank officials in the country, we do not need such a test because there is clear evidence to suggest that the battered image of bank officials is a direct outcome of their unethical and dishonest conduct.

For a very long time, we associated bank managers in Nigeria with honest and ethical conduct. Whenever you wanted to fill out an official form (could be public examination form or visa/passport renewal form), you were required to approach a bank manager or a police officer or a pastor (among others) to initial that application form. That requirement was based on the norms that existed and still exist in civilized society where the bank manager or pastor or police officer represented in real terms an emblem of honesty or ethical conduct. In Nigeria the public no longer perceives the bank official as emblematic of honesty or ethics. If anything, the reverse is the case now. The image of the bank official in Nigeria has been sullied by the unethical and dishonest activities of some (not all) bank officials and managers themselves. And there is unassailable evidence to substantiate this view.

The Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) revealed this week that, in the past three years, the banking sector in Nigeria lost over N33 billion (naira) to fraud. That is a staggering average of N11 billion (naira) per year. I can hear some bank officials and managers shouting: but who said the fraud was committed or perpetrated by bank officers and managers? To produce that evidence, let's revisit a report a report in The Guardian of Tuesday this week, where the ICPC chairman "Justice Mustapha Akanbi (rtd) said the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) annual reports for 2001, 2002 and 2003 indicated that bank managers were involved in the frauds". The Guardian pointed out that the 200 cases reported in 2001 involved "152 staff and 55 managers and supervisors, representing 36.18 per cent of known cases" while 796 cases recorded in 2002 involved "85 staff and 16 managers and supervisors, representing 18.80 per cent". Of the 850 cases recorded in 2003, 105 bank staff and 25 managers and supervisors were involved.

According to the ICPC chairman, some of the crimes involved forging of cheques, "granting of unauthorised loans/overdrafts, posting of fictitious credit, suppression of cheques, fraudulent transfers, withdrawals and outright theft". Justice Akanbi did not end with mere figures. He pointed out how fraudulent activities perpetrated in the banks by bank officials impact negatively the federal government's crusade to attract foreign investment into the country: "The spirited campaign by the President to attract foreign investment in Nigeria is being seriously hampered by the perception of Nigeria by the international business community as a country where corruption thrives." But I do not see how Justice Akanbi's suggestions (woolly as they might appear) could reduce or end fraud by bank staff. Justice Akanbi suggested that "Ethics must be injected into both the regulatory and operational infrastructure of banks," adding that training and ethical drills would help to inculcate into bank staff a culture of honesty, selflessness and vigilance.

I would argue that we cannot fight unethical and dishonest conduct in banks and other institutions without examining our cultural values. We live in a culture that values wealth and property acquisition. We live in a society where the rich are revered and the poor are treated as offenders rather than the victims of an unjust socio-economic system. In our society, money is the language that opens all doors. With money you can achieve anything, virtually anything you want. With money, you can dine with monarchs, buy and receive their chieftaincy titles, disobey traffic regulations, buy road traffic officers, buy personal police security escorts, buy honorary doctorate degrees from impoverished and under-funded universities and buy front row seats in cathedrals and local churches.

It is a country in which everybody wants to become rich overnight. It is a society that worships wealthy people without asking fundamental questions about how the wealth was acquired. It is a society that condones illegal means of acquiring wealth and property regardless of how they are acquired. We live in a society that promotes rich mediocre people with half-fried ideas above skilled professionals with informed opinions and little or no money. We live in a society that confers national honours and merit awards on people with questionable integrity without a clear set of criteria for such awards.

Fraud is endemic not only in the banks but also in most other public and private institutions. We cannot tackle seriously or address the problem of fraud and indeed corruption without re-assessing the impact of our social values on the conduct of members of our society. If this were not the case, President Olusegun Obasanjo would not be forced to extract from his ministers confessions about their role in the alleged attempts to bribe National Assembly legislators so their budgets could sail smoothly in the Assembly.