Isaac Anumihe
Restaurant operators on Savannah Bank premises in Wuse, Abuja are currently groaning in pains, agony and sorrow. They are still dazed in the world of unbelief over how the N108,000 rent they collectively paid to an agent who claimed to be managing the premises of the Jim Nwobodo’s inactive bank.
The reality had dawned on them after the operators were given a quit notice to vacate the premises before the end of October this year, resulting in their vigorous search for the agent who had disappeared into the thin air.
Trouble had started when the new agent told the operators that the bank which had been in a state of inactivity for close to 20 years now would soon begin operation, urging them to wind up every activity within the premises.
According to the operators, the man, known to them as Eze, who had posed as the agent of Jim Nwobodo, and in charge of the premises, had collected N2,000 from each of them every month for the spaces they occupied at the Savannah Bank premises, disappeared on hearing that another agent had given the operators a quit notice.
Since then, according to them, all efforts to contact him have failed, putting the operators in a very tight corner on where to relocate to. Narrating their ordeal to Daily Sun, one of the operators, Sunday Okolo, said: “We have been here for about three years now and there is one man they call Eze who collects money from us.
“Last month, the owner of Savannah Bank sent another agent to give us quit notice. He gave us between Thursday and Monday to leave the premises. After much begging, he now extended it till the end of this month October.
“The man we were paying money to has run away. The man collected a lot of money from us because we pay N2,000 every month. We are almost 20 operators and he collects over N30,000 every month. We don’t have any other place to go to. I don’t know other people’s arrangements,” he lamented.
Some of the menu available at the premises which has made the place a melting point for those hungry, include international and local cuisines such as amala, gbigiri, starch, pounded yam with vegetable soup, nsala soup, ogbono soup or okro soup.
Others are banga, edikaikang or egusi soups; roasted plantain, yam, potato or cocoyam with ‘ugba’, salad and red palm oil. They also serve fried rice with chicken and Chinese cuisines.
They also have the VIPs sections in some of the numerous abandoned offices, while the less-important persons were serviced in the open. Depending on the type of food, those served in the rooms or offices pay higher than those served outside the premises.
Apart from the restaurant, the premises are also used for ‘short time’ business services at night when the food vendors had closed and gone. A pimp and member of the cartel, who pleaded anonymity, told Daily Sun that although the place is not equipped for such business, the customers are given a mat by the operators upon payment of N200.
“The place booms at night. There are so many women who hang around at night because the place is a very busy area. There are so many plazas in the place that attract the opposite sex. So, you can pick any of them for as low as N500 and pay N200 for a space” he said.
Savannah Bank, Wuse is surrounded by Sky Memorial (a large shopping complex), National secretariat of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Novare Shopping Mall, housing Shoprite and other supermarkets; a magistrate court, the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) headquarters and lots of shops.
In February 2002, Savannah Bank’s licence was withdrawn under a controversial circumstance. But its licence was restored through a court judgment in 2009.
Before Savannah Bank’s trouble, an investor, International Resource Associates of London, bought 67.35 per cent shares of the bank in 1999, resulting in the bank coming under new management in April 14, 2000.
As one of the leading banks in the country then, the management smeared itself into the murky waters of politics and got drowned with the bank alongside the depositors’ funds whose owners must have died by now.
At the time of its forcible closure, Savannah Bank had nearly 85,000 shareholders, a share capital of N1billion, and 118 branches across the country with depositors numbering hundreds of thousands.
Before its demise, the bank showed no obvious or remote signs of distress that could have precipitated its closure. The much that was disclosed was that the bank committed some infractions of extant regulations owing to its alleged non-professionalism in aspects of its operations.
But the three-member Court of Appeal panel was firm in ruling that the bank’s closure was “unlawful as we have found that it was done in bad faith.”
Perhaps, the ‘bad faith’ was demonstrated shortly before its licence was revoked when both the CBN and NDIC demanded that Savannah Bank recapitalise with N5.4 billion within three months. The bank’s plea for a year’s grace to increase its capital base was rejected.
The calamity that befell Savannah Bank led to job losses of thousands of Nigerians but the government of the day did not bat an eyelid. Another reason the bank has not taken off several years after its restoration was the fear that depositors whose monies had been tied down would want to withdraw their money and so cause another run on the bank. But for how long can a bank hold on to depositors’ funds?