Bank Close in On Indebted Airlines

The fear of Sanusi Lamido has become a recurring decimal in every banking hall in Nigeria. And as the common year end deadline draws near, and the CBN sanitization effort intensifies, banks are working round the clock to get debtors to pay back their loan.
Union Bank, bent on recovering the loan, have desperately closed in on the aviation industry as the ticketing desks of indebted airlines have practically been taken over by many of the bank staff seeking to recover the debts.
In a CBN advertorial on major dailies recently, IRS Airlines Limited was said to owe Union Bank PLC N3,331,882,287; while Chachangi is indebted to the tune of N423,467,502 to the same bank as at May 31 this year.
M2 gathered from sources close to the sector that the airlines management were arm-twisted into a 50-50 sharing formula, after the airlines rejected a much larger sharing deal in favour of the banks.
The ongoing special examination by the CBN and NDIC have already been conducted on 10 banks, with five found wanting. The 14 remaining banks are now being examined and there are fears that more casualties may result.