The Governor of Central Bank (CBN), Mallam Sanusi  Lamido Sanusi has  said he was not afraid of anybody since he believed he was doing the right thing to sanitize the Nigerian Banking sector and those super Nigerians who feel they were untouchable would soon receive the greatest surprise of their life.

Sanusi spoke on the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) monitored in Kaduna on Monday, adding that what Billionaire Businessman, Jimoh Ibrahim said about his N14 billion loan from Oceanic bank was not true.

"Honestly, I am not afraid of anybody, whatever that I am supposed to do, once it is within my jurisdiction I will do it. I want to assure you that there are some people who think nobody can touch them, those people would be surprise."

"On Jimoh Ibrahim, it's not true and I would not like to be exchanging words with anyone, when we investigated we found that he got N14 billion loan from the bank, what happened was that Oceanic bank told him if could pay N12 billion ,they would forfeit the N2 billion."
" After our examination, he went and paid N4 billion thinking he had paid out of N12 billion, remaining N8 billion. In the first place he has not paid the N12 billion for them to give him a waiver of N2 billion. Secondly when we went to investigate the account, as of 31 of May, Jimoh Ibrahim took loan of N14 billion," he said.

The CBN boss lamented that some of the loans were discovered to be deceitful as the sacked Managing Directors of some the 5 banks used the money for their own selfish purposes.

His words: "Those working in the banking sector know the problems in the banking industry more than those people outside who do not know the major problems that are facing some banks. The global economic meltdown has affected Nigerian banks in 2 ways."
" The first is like we know that the price of oil has fallen, some banks had given out loans and when the price of oil fell, some of the debtors deliberately refused to pay and the banks lose. There were also many banks that used people's money to trade in stock exchange market, and they also lost money in that process when the stock market crashed."

"So instead of these banks to come out like their foreign counterpart and tell the world the loses they incurred, and if they needed more investment for them to source for the money, they choose to hide their problem and the CBN had continued to help them with money since October."
" So we decided to investigate and we found out that 40% of the loan given out by these banks may not be repaid. That meant the banks were on the way to collapse. But in order to salvage people's money, we pumped in N400 billion into these banks."

Commenting on Charles Sulodo who was assuring that Nigerian banks were okay before he left, Sanusi said "I have one principle, if you observed when I stood before the Senate; I never liked to criticize my predecessor."
"Now that I am in the office and entrusted by people, whatever needs to be amended is incumbent upon me to do that, what he (Sulodo) had done has passed. If some people had something to say, I would not like to comment on that."

"Investigation is on, on 11 more banks and would be completed at the end of this month, 3 other banks, City bank, Standard Chartered and Stanbic, we will complete the investigation in September."
" So people would know everything but what we understand from our end, is that those 5 banks had serious problems in Nigeria and had given out more loans than any other. Even if other banks have problems, such problems are not insurmountable."

"Leadership is always a difficult thing, when you investigated and found the truth, it would be improper to just keep the report on your table. When these banks crumbled, poor people with money in such banks will suffer."

" Many people had become victims of these failed banks, this step we have taken and the step we think is right is that step that would protect people's wealth. But action should be taken on these banks executives and those who borrowed the money and refused to pay."

"Why we have to make public names of the loan defaulters were because some people have started saying it was a Northern agenda that we want to crumble some of their banks, so we decided to let the world know what was really going on. Any bank that gives out loan of N300 billion and the money is not recovered, should such bank be allowed to be or not?"
" Secondly such people that collected the loans are those who go behind to criticize, saying what is happening to the banks is wrong. So we feel is proper for the public to know that it is such people that are benefitting from the system, they borrow without paying back."
" They borrow money belonging to the people and build houses, buy aero planes and travel around the world. People should know that it was their money these people are using; perhaps this may prevent such misuse and sanitize the country."

"What we have seen the EFCC doing after sitting down with them, they sat with the Managing Directors of these affected banks and they gave them the names of those involved. There are those who sought for extension of time to repay the loans and were given, there are those who achieved what they wanted with the loans but had refused to pay back."
" There are those loans again that were full of deceit, it was actually the bank MDs that gave themselves the loans and established companies with the money in their names, or that of their cronies. The authorities are really behind such bank officials to get people's money," he said.