Chronic Debtors’ Property was Put Up For Sale by Banks

Some of the Money Deposit Banks in the country have compiled for sale the lists of houses, hotels, filling stations, schools, among other property used as collateral by debtors in a bid to recover their capital.

The banks, in a name and shame manner, had earlier in the week published the lists of chronic debtors who were unable to meet up with the July 31 deadline given by the Central Bank of Nigeria to repay their loans.

So far, 17 banks had published the names of their delinquent debtors and of the N175.61bn being owed the banks, First Bank has N43.72bn non-performing loans; Unity Bank, 45.52bn; Access Bank, N3.4bn; Diamond Bank, N47.17bn; First City Monument Bank, N17.1bn; Ecobank, N5.4bn; UBA, N9.3bn; and Wema Bank, N1.26bn.

While the Assets Management Company of Nigeria, Standard Chartered Bank, Keystone Bank and others are waiting to publish their lists of debtors next week, the total number of debtors so far released by the banks, after removing some names due to litigation and last-minute renegotiation, is 606.

However, investigations by Saturday PUNCH revealed that apart from publishing the debtors’ names, some of the banks had concluded plans to sell real estate assets used as collateral by debtors and had already engaged the services of estate firms/agents to dispose them.

A document, exclusively obtained by Saturday PUNCH, lists 43 property put up for sale by Sterling Bank with a total value of over N3bn.

The property include a five-bedroom detached house located in Magodo, Lagos, and offered for N105m; a hotel in Osogbo, Osun State, N241m; a two-wing duplex in Lekki Phase 1, N150m; a storey building in Garki, Abuja, N172m; a storey building in Ibadan, Oyo State, N30m; and a commercial/residential property in Ilorin, Kwara State, N70m.

Also, there is a storey building in Akwa Ibom State, N29m; a filling station at Owode/Idi-Iroko Road, Ogun State, N2.8m; detached blocks of flats, duplex and school halls at Asaba, Delta State, N135m; a block of flats and other adjoining property in Asaba, Delta State, N135m; a detached house in Maitama District, Abuja, N305m; and a bungalow in Benin City, Edo State, N14m.

Some estate surveyors and valuers, who confided in one of our correspondents, affirmed that they had received instructions from some of the banks to help them dispose the property which are spread across the country.

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