By Oluwole Josiah, Abuja

Wednesday, 23 Feb 2011

The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation has commenced negotiations with the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria on the purchase of N85bn of the N162bn debts being owed liquidated banks.

The Acting Managing Director, NDIC, Alhaji Umaru Ibrahim, who disclosed this, said that the corporation would recover the remaining N77m from the debtors of the liquidated banks.

He spoke while being screened for confirmation as a substantive Managing Director of the corporation by the Senate Committee on Banking and Other Financial Institutions on Tuesday.

He also disclosed that the NDIC had concluded plans to pay off depositors of Triumph Bank and Fortune Bank in spite of current litigation instituted by promoters of the banks.

He said that since inception, the NDIC had paid a total of N3.278tn to the insured depositors of failed banks.

About 47 banks were closed down during the 2005 banking sector consolidation.

Ibrahim added that the corporation had hired debt collectors and lawyers to help recover the remaining N77bn so as to enable it to pay off depositors of the liquidated banks.

Ibrahim further said that insured deposit of ‘universal banks’ had been increased to N500,000, while that of microfinance banks was N200,000.

He said insured deposits of the 103 microfinance banks, whose licences were recently revoked by the Central Bank of Nigeria, about N4.3bn, were already being paid “as a result of received payments of N1.2bn.”

He told the committee that he had forwarded a memo to the CBN on the possibility of paying depositors of the two banks, taking advantage of some provisions in the NDIC Act.

The NDIC had said that it had paid the depositors and creditors of 45 out of 47 liquidated banks.

 

Source: Punch