Flashback: Unemployment: The Evil Nigeria Banks Do – Maxwell Adeyemi Adeleye

POSDCORB, an acronym propounded by Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick in 1937, is widely used in the field of Management. It reflects the classic functions of administrative management. The acronym stands for steps in the administrative process which are: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Co-Ordinating, Reporting and Budgeting. Among the functions of management and steps in administrative process is staffing, which connotes “the whole personnel function of bringing in and training the staff and maintaining favorable conditions of work.” According to Theo Haimann, “Staffing pertains to recruitment, selection, development and compensation of subordinates.” Haimann further argued that Staffing function is the most important managerial act along with planning, organizing, directing and controlling. The operations of these four functions depend upon the manpower which is available through staffing function. Affirmatively, no managerial function as opined by Gulick and Urwick can be carried out without personnel. It is the Personnels in the organization that plan, direct, control, report and prepare budget. The success and failure of every organization lie on the personnel involved in the organization.

An Organization can however be private or public. Private organizations are the conglomerates established under the law whose control and management are strictly under the tutelage of individuals and group of individuals while public organizations are the ones owned and managed by the government. Among the private organizations that exist in Nigeria and which make use of personnel for profit maximization are 24 commercial Banks namely: Access Bank, Citibank, Diamond Bank, Ecobank Nigeria, Enterprise Bank Limited, Fidelity Bank Nigeria, First Bank of Nigeria, First City Monument Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, Heritage Bank Plc, Keystone Bank Limited, Mainstreet Bank Limited, Savannah Bank, Skye Bank, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Sterling Bank, Union Bank of Nigeria, United Bank for Africa, Unity Bank Plc, Wema Bank, Zenith Bank.

Due to limited space, I will be writing on how three Nigerian banks treat their personnel with focuses on the modus operandi for selection and recruitment and remunerations. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM), 80% of Nigerian Universities graduates are presently wallowing around the streets of Nigeria without jobs. Due to this unfortunate quagmire, banks operating in Nigeria have turned Nigerian graduates to slaves. The jobs they offer most Nigerian graduates can be likened to what transpired during the ancient days of slavery. The most pathetic of the evil currently being perpetrated against Nigerians by Nigerian banks is the contracts appointment of graduates to perform functions expected of a permanently recruited employee.

Take for instance, Access Bank PLC only manages each of its branches with three pensionable staff which are the branch and operations managers and one marketing staff who serves as the branch team leader. The rest are on contracts appointment and they are not entitled to pension, leave allowance, training and re-training, etc. Employees on contract in Access Bank are issued letter bearing the name of one of its subsidiaries that I won’t like to mention. These contracted bankers are paid peanuts. Those working in Lagos leave their respective homes before 5.am and they don’t return until 10.pm. To be specific, they are paid less than N65,000 monthly out of which they are mandated to buy expensive corporate attires and shoes. The marketers among them are tasked to bring N500 million deposit monthly. They are appraised and scored based on the deposit they mobilize to their respective branches. Anyone who is graded “E” for three consecutive times risks being dismissed.

The evil being perpetrated by the management of Unity Bank PLC is the most alarming. There, young graduates are invited annually to write aptitude tests for employment as Executive Trainees (ET). Interestingly, it is when those that pass the aptitude test and interview get to training school that they get to know that they are to be paid as outsource staff for a minimum of one year before being converted to ET. However, some spend four years in Unity Bank as outsource staff before they are converted to ET. At times, whom you know matters but the most luckiest spends two years before being converted. Also, promotion of staff in Unity Bank is like gold. As a former transaction officer and Marketer in a bank, I know many staff of Unity Bank that have not been promoted since year 2006. I want to declare unequivocally that It is the height of wickedness to subject young graduates to contract appointment for three years before being converted to ET which is the lowest grade in Banking. It is also irresponsible not to promote a hardworking staff for eight years. Let me also reveal that about 35% of the staff of Unity Bank PLC are issued appointment letter bearing the name of a company called “Caranda Management Services Limited”. My investigation revealed that Caranda is owned by one of the Directors of the bank.

Also, in Diamond Bank PLC, 45% of its employees are issued appointment letters bearing the name of a company called “C & I Workforce Nigeria Limited”. Marketers, Transaction Officers, etc whom are graduates are recruited to serve the bank through the proxy firm. These employees are used like slaves. Ironically, some of them are holders of masters degree. They are not entitled to any allowance whatsoever. No capacity development. No training and re-training. Salaries are increased once in five years. However, do we blame the management of these banks over the way they are currently exploiting Nigerians? My answer is No! The mother of all blame goes to the Nigerian government for failing in their responsibility to provide job opportunities for Nigerians thereby making the private sector to be brazenly and cruelly exploiting Nigerians. It has also been rumored that Nigerian government officials do receive kick-back from the Organized private sectors. Some top bankers serve as fronts and loot for politicians. They bankroll politicians running for elective positions and these politicians in return, defend their “friends’ interest” after winning elections. The Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity, Trade Union Congress (TUC), Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), etc have failed in their responsibilities to protect the welfare of workers in the private sector.

In conclusion, I call on the federal government to set up a task force that would be monitoring the welfare of employees in the private sector. Central government should start resuscitating all the moribund industries in Nigeria so as to make life better for Nigerians. The Nigerian Telecommunication (NITEL), Nigerian Railway Corporation, Dunlop and Michelin tyres, Ajaokuta Steel Company and other moribund factories should be brought back to Nigerians so as to reduce the wave of unemployment that is currently blowing in Nigeria.

Maxwell Adeyemi Adeleye writes from Magodo, Lagos 
Email: [email protected] 

This article was first published by The Herald in 2015