Godwin Emefiele, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has issued a stern warning to misbehaving shareholders of deposit money banks, stating that the top regulator will not waste time revoking the license of any bank whose shareholders pose a risk to the bank’s stability and efficient operation.

Emefiele argued that banks belong to depositors, not shareholders, whose deposits account for more than 90% of the money in bank vaults, despite CBN’s threat that it would prefer to do away with shareholders if it meant keeping depositors’ monies safe and secure.

In addition to the TB that we are storing, we now maintain roughly N14 trillion in bank deposits for cash reserves. In his opinion, banks’ Return on Equity (ROE) was insufficient.