My Nigeria…

Nigeria’s rich and powerful, long accustomed to a lifestyle of yachts, fancy cars, and businesses fueled by unchecked credit lines, have been put on notice.

Nigeria’s central bank on Wednesday made the unprecedented move of publishing a list of what it says are the major debtors to five banks rescued in a $2.6 billion bailout, among them some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Nigeria. Hours later, the country’s top anticorruption unit, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said the debtors had one week to repay their loans or risk arrest and seizure of their assets.

The list of more than 200 companies, individuals and government bodies includes Nigeria’s only two billionaires; Nigerian Stock Exchange officials; energy and hospitality conglomerate Transnational Corporation of Nigeria PLC; the former governor of Nigeria’s richest state; and the Ministry of Finance.

The Ministry of Finance, among others, couldn’t be reached to comment.

“It has become necessary to use this medium to request the following defaulting customers of the affected banks to pay without further delay their indebtedness, failing which the banks will take all appropriate legal actions to ensure repayment,” the central bank said in a statement on its Web site.

“They have just one week to bring in their checks or drafts to us or we begin their arrest and prosecution as well as confiscation of their assets because they are people of enormous means,” EFCC head Farida Waziri said in a statement.

The moves of newly appointed central-bank Gov. Lamido Sanusi have surprised many in Africa’s most populous nation, and are seen as sending a message to Nigeria’s fast-living business elite. “It sends a signal that a phase of doing things a certain way is over,” Olawale Edun, chairman of financial-services group Chapel Hill Denham, said in Lagos.

On Friday, the central bank injected $2.6 billion into Afribank Nigeria PLC, FinBank, Intercontinental Bank, Oceanic Bank International (Nigeria) Ltd., and Union Bank of Nigeria after they had accumulated $7.6 billion in bad debts, which the central bank said threatened the survival of Africa’s second-biggest economy.

For years, Nigerian banks and those they lent to have operated with little oversight. Several debtors named Wednesday appeared on more than one bank’s list, pointing up the lack of a credit-rating agency. Mr. Sanusi, a former banker, took office in June pledging to crack down on banks with poor lending records.

The central bank fired the top executives of the five bailed-out banks. Executives from four of the five have been questioned by the EFCC, and managers at the five banks have been put on a watch list to prevent them from leaving the country, the EFCC said.

Lawyers representing the ousted managing director of Intercontinental Bank, Erastus Akingbola, on Tuesday filed an injunction against his ouster with the Lagos Supreme Court. A senior government official said Tuesday that he hadn’t yet been questioned and was out of the country.

None of the five bailed-out banks could be reached to comment.

The top overall debtor named on the central bank’s list was Ascot Offshore Nigeria Ltd., an oil services company that bought out U.S. company Willbros Group Inc. in 2007. The central bank said the company owed Intercontinental Bank 44.67 billion naira, or $284.3 million. The company couldn’t be reached to comment.

Also on the list of debtors was Aliko Dangote, considered Nigeria’s richest man, and president of the Dangote Group, which controls significant portions of the cement, sugar, flour and rice industries in Nigeria. Earlier this month, he was elected president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange by the exchange’s council.

The central bank cited what it says is a $50.5 million debt of Dansa Oil & Gas Ltd. to Intercontinental, and listed Mr. Dangote as a “director or shareholder.” A separate listing said Dangote Industries Ltd. owed just under $16 million to Oceanic Bank.

“Aliko Dangote was never a director of Dansa Oil & Gas Ltd. That is actually a misnomer. He is not part of the management of Dansa,” a Dangote Group spokesman said. He added, “For the matter of the 2.2 billion naira owed to Oceanic Bank, this is true, but the matter is close to a resolution. They’re working out the final figures.”

Femi Otedola, head of African Petroleum PLC and Zenon Petroleum & Gas Ltd. — and the other Nigerian on the most recent Forbes magazine list of billionaires — was also cited, for a debt the centrl bank says is $120 million. Mr. Otedola couldn’t be reached to comment.

The Transcorp conglomerate Transcorp was named for a $41.1 million debt to Union Bank. The head of the company, Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, is also executive director of the stock exchange.

Officials from the Nigerian Stock Exchange declined to comment. Transcorp couldn’t be reached to comment.

Nigerian energy firm Oando PLC on Wednesday denied the central bank’s statement that it had a $47 million nonperforming loan with Oceanic Bank, according to Reuters.

WSJ