Brief comments

Mustapha Chike-Obi, the head of AMCON told the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions that the 8 banks which received =N=620 billion in emergency bailout funds in 2009 have repaid the full amount to the government

What he did not say is the banks were able to make this repayment because AMCON paid over =N=1.2 trillion for the banks' toxic assets. When you blow away the fog, the Government/CBN/AMCON more or less gave the banks =N=600 billion in bailout funds, wrote off the bailout money, and then gave the banks an additional =N=600 billion for their toxic assets, on top of extra money poured into the nationalized banks to recapitalize them.

The bailout is not something I like, but I have always said that it was necessary. With that said, it would be good for Nigerians to understand how much the whole thing will cost us when all is said and done. Because we cannot go back to the days of letting the banks and the regulators get away with knowingly doing the wrong things; when they do that, we end up left with a choice of either coughing up billions we don't have to fix the industry, or watching the industry falter with problematic effects on the wider economy (which, by the way, is still growing).

In other news, the Code of Conduct Tribunal has decided it does not have jurisdiction to try Lagos State Supreme Godfather Bola Ahmed Tinubu for corruption.

Note, they did not say he was innocent. They said they were not the arena for him to be properly charged. Long story short, the Federal Government and the Peoples Democratic Party have made their point, letting Tinubu know that he is free to do what he does so long as he limits what he is doing to the constituencies they have allowed him to have.

By the way, last weekend the PDP somewhat controversially won the Kogi State gubernatorial elections over an ACN candidate backed by Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Am I being too cynical in pondering whether Tinubu got the intended message?