The House of Representatives instructed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to suspend the sale of Polaris Bank Plc immediately on Wednesday.
The House ruled that the suspension should last until all procedures for an open, transparent, and competitive bid process were completed by the CBN, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria.
According to the house, this divestiture should follow best practices and procedures.
This came after Henry Nwauba (APGA-Imo) won approval for a resolution on Wednesday at the plenary that was deemed to be of urgent public concern.
Mr Nwauba said that a contemporary social media trend had brought the sale of Polaris Bank for N40 billion to the public’s attention. He stated in the plenary that it was important to make sure the bank’s divestiture would not jeopardize the primary reason for the CBN’s intervention in the bank, which was to serve the general welfare of the public.
He continued by saying that the divestiture process should be conducted in the most open manner possible.
He said that doing this was essential to preventing public outrage and an unfavourable response from key economic players, including international business partners, the banking industry, depositors, and correspondent banks.
Therefore, the House established an Ad hoc Committee to assess the overall expenditure made by the Nigerian federal government in Polaris Bank and account for every federal government financial input into the bank within 20 days.
In order to ascertain if the conditions and circumstances of the sale were likely to provide a favourable return on public money already committed to the bank, whether as bailout funds or other investments, the House said that this should be done through CBN, NDIC, and AMCON.
The committee was encouraged by the House to take the required steps to guarantee that the public money given to Polaris Bank was properly documented and accounted for.
