Zenith Bank , Access and Mainstreet Bank, Sacks 4,000 Employees

Today is a sad day for some employees of Zenith Bank PLC, one of Nigeria’s leading new generation banks as the bank served over 1,200 staffers with notices terminating their appointments. Zenith Bank says it’s overall vision is to emerge a reputable international financial services network recognized for innovation, superior customer service and performance, while creating premium value for all stakeholders.

 

With the latest development, the bank joins the growing list of banks in the financial sector of the economy to embark on the restructuring of its staff as a strategy to repositioning for growth. Recently, Access Bank, which acquired former Intercontinental Bank in the wake of the bank consolidation policy, dispensed with the services of over 1,600 of its workers across the nation, while Mainstreet Bank, one of the three nationalised banks is reported to have equally sent more than 400 of its workers away for a similar reason.

 

The question now is, though there may be no government in place yet, but does president Muhammadu Buhari understand what that means to the economy of a country that is already suffering from double digits figure level of unemployment. For a country to shed that much number of people into the labour market at once, indicates doom and not the change Nigerians voted for just three months ago. 

 

Every figure that has come out of the highly rated national and global financial regulatory institutions in recent times has indicated that Nigeria is fast on the part of economic decline. Just today a global economic think-tank reported that Nigeria may be heading for a recession as a result of the actions and inactions of the yet to be formed government of Muhammadu Buhari.

 

May we use this opportunity to remind President Buhari that governance and the entire Nigeria economy does not need to come to a standstill while he makes all the noise about corruption and anticorruption.

What you need to do is, set out your standard based on your government's economic policies and mandate your ministers to religiously implement them to the later, while you audit and demand for independent situation reports from time to time. The earlier you do this, the better to save this country from the level of uncertainty your inactions has plugged it into.

 

No investor will ever invest in an uncertain environment, nor in an environment where there is constant interruption of the business statistical measure of change in an economy or a securities market as is the case with Nigerian at the moment.