At a meeting of Nigerian bankers and officials in Enugu, the capital city of Enugu State, last December, there was unanimous agreement that the future of the country depended upon a revitalised banking sector. Now, more than 15 months since the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi, assumed office and initiated a dramatic series of banking reforms, the question today is whether the governor's transformational agenda is enough to rebuild the banking sector and provide the necessary catalyst for economic growth.
In the second half of 2009, Mr Sanusi, the former chief executive of the country's largest bank, First Bank of Nigeria, oversaw a mass of reforms going right to the heart of the industry in order to ensure a strong, sound and reliable sector and to stimulate increased lending to other sectors.
