First Bank Crisis: Why Elephants Don't Do Breakdance, By 'Tope Fasua

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Godwin Emefiele, governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) leading the response to the country’s dollar shortage.
With the move by the CBN, we pray First Bank finds some peace. But more generally, we hope that our smart people who run banks will understand the sheer enormity of the licenses they hold and never get it into their heads to throw it all away in some flight of fancy.
Founded by the proprietor of Elder Dempster Agencies, Alfred Lewis Jones in 1894, the British Bank of West Africa was meant to facilitate the importation of silver currency into the region, where Jones held a monopoly. The bank therefore had a clear historical and business advantage from the beginning, with the imprimatur of the British crown, which held sway over half of the world in its colonial supremacy. The world hadn’t cavorted into a needless war yet at that time. The sun was deemed never to set on the Empire. BBWA was the clear standard for banking in the West African region and beyond. An acquisition by Standard Bank in 1965 led to a name change, and later, as Nigeria’s military leaders decreed the indigenisation of all foreign-owned companies, the bank had to change nomenclature to First Bank of Nigeria in 1979. It is interesting to note that by then, Standard Bank had already become Standard Chartered Bank. In the world of rapid mergers and acquisitions, it is sometimes hard to trace who is what. A Standard Chartered Bank exists in Nigeria today, different from the Standard Bank that is a shareholder in StanbicIBTC Bank.

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