Access Bank financed the importation of about 40 per cent of the petrol brought into Nigeria in 2011 and received, into accounts at its branches, a similar percentage of the N2trillion the FG paid as subsidy during the period.
Access Bank and other Nigerian banks played major roles in the fuel subsidy scandal of 2011 and have several questions to answer, a PREMIUM TIMES investigation has shown.
Sources at Access Bank, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the oil industry say that although there is no apparent focus on the role of Nigerian banks in the whole scandal, some of them, particularly the major players like Access Bank helped perpetrate the fraud.
While N240billion was approved in the 2011 budget as petrol subsidy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister last week told the Nigerian Senate that the Federal Government actually paid 2.19 trillion as subsidy to petrol importers.
Following pressure on the administration by civil society and other Nigerians over the implementation of the recommendations of the House of Representatives committee, which probed the fuel subsidy payment for 2011, the government set up two committees. A technical committee was first set up by the Finance Ministry, followed by a presidential committee, set up to review the work of the technical committee. Both committees were headed by Access Bank's Group Managing Director, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede.
