I first arrived in Nigeria in January 1965. The flight from London was delayed by the early morning Harmattan, a dry, dusty west African trade wind, but I remember thinking how much cooler Lagos seemed compared with my previous posting in Khartoum.
The head of Barclays Protocol took me to the bank's office in the Lagos Marina. Afterwards, we had a look into the spanking new Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in Tinubu Square. It was the start of a long friendship but little did I know what was in store.
In July 1967, I was staying with my wife in the Ikoyi Hotel en route to the UK. Lagos was extremely jumpy, with overzealous 'army boys' everywhere, and an armoured car stationed outside the CBN. Biafra's Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu had declared war on June 30. There was an air raid on the suburb of Ikeja and explosions in the Yaba district. Having decided it was time to leave, we managed to get one of BOAC's last flights out.
After a spell working in Cameroon and then the UK, Nigeria clawed me back again in the 1970s. As foreign manager at the Co-operative Bank in Manchester I had noticed that the bank was confirming letters of credit for the Co-operative Bank of Nigeria in Ibadan, so I organised a visit. The then managing director, Chief Olu Onagoruwa, came all the way from Ibadan, capital of the Oyo state, to meet us in Lagos. He was a real gentleman who some had tipped to become governor of the CBN one day.
Nigeria and CBN really took hold of my life in 1981 when, as regional manager (Africa) for the UK's Midland Bank, I began travelling regularly to the country. As a leading correspondent bank, the Midland had long-standing relationships with the CBN and about 15 correspondents in Nigeria.
By 1982/83, with plummeting oil prices, the CBN found it increasingly difficult to meet the foreign exchange demands of the Nigerian banks. The then president, Shehu Shagari, was seeking re-election and the administration needed to keep imports flowing against the unwillingness of international banks to confirm letters of credit. A rescheduling of outstanding loans (LCs) was to be arranged.
So I began eight years of service on the 'Club of London' Nigerian Rescheduling Committee. In 1986, once Nigeria had repaid about $2bn-worth of LCs, the banks came back for more. At the time there were about 110 with arrears so it was quite an exercise. There were many late night sessions at the offices of Clifford Chance in Aldermanbury Square in London. Because of my close relationship with the CBN, I became a good friend of the then governor, Abdulkadir Ahmad, and was often used as a messenger boy to see if this or that bit of the deal would fly.
Communications were also a problem for us in carrying out our daily banking operations as Nigeria did not go onto Swift until the 1990s. Our operations people were not happy to have to continue with telexes. As such, it was necessary for me to have a very close relationship with the director of foreign operations at the CBN and his team. They could phone me day or night, and often did – for example, when the president's plane was denied refuelling at a London airport unless a bag of cash was produced.
Follow the money
One morning in the late 1980s I got a frantic call from JO Sonoiki, director of foreign operations, to say about $14m was missing from their account at the US Federal Reserve. It turned out it had been transferred to a bank in Guernsey. I was asked if I could I get in touch with them and ensure it was not paid out until the CBN could get a freezing order in place. I phoned the Guernsey bank in question, expecting a rebuff. Fortunately, the CEO was an ex colleague and he kept an eye on the situation until a CBN man could get there and halt the payment.
I once asked Alhaji Mahey Rasheed, Mr Sonoiki's successor as director of foreign operations, why the CBN called on me and not the Bank of England, who was its major correspondent bank. He replied that the CBN trusted me to get the job done and could not waste time with "those people who do not even know where Nigeria is".
When CBN moved to Abuja in the late 1980s from Lagos I was one of the first bankers to travel there. For almost all the years I served CBN, the country was under military government, which made for a tense and difficult time. However, I enjoyed every minute of it and when I retired in March 1999, the CBN said a very sincere and gracious thank you.
Anthony Williams is a non-executive director at First Bank of Nigeria
