Years ago, a car dealer I knew went to a bank to withdraw money for a vehicle he had sold. Minutes after returning to his car shop, armed robbers appeared, demanded the cash, and shot him dead. His death was not an isolated tragedy — it was a symptom of a financial system that continually pours fuel into the fire of criminality. In Nigeria, cash is not merely a medium of exchange; it is the oxygen of banditry, kidnapping, election fraud, and insurgency. And the banking sector — knowingly or otherwise — supplies that oxygen.
Before and shortly after independence, banking in Nigeria was a respected moral enterprise. Ethical banking was a lived reality. Bankers were guardians of integrity, guided by modest profit culture and strict codes enforced by regulators. But as deregulation expanded and predatory capitalism tightened its grip, the moral centre collapsed. The Nigerian banking system shifted from “service to society” to “service to power and greed.”
A new class emerged — post-colonial bourgeois bankers wrapped in expensive suits but devoid of conscience. They mastered the art of legally and illegally warehousing government revenues, siphoning public funds, and laundering political loot. These were no longer custodians of public trust but powerful magnets of corruption, holding the keys to the vault and quietly engineering the decay of the system. Mikhail Bakunin warned that “Power corrupts those who wield it, and those who obey it are corrupted in turn.” Nigeria’s banking elite embody this prophecy: those who command the financial bloodstream of the nation have become architects of its moral collapse, while the public, conditioned to endure financial abuse, becomes complicit in its own subjugation.
Nigeria’s banking sector does not merely mirror national decay — it funds it. Banks have repeatedly been implicated in laundering election money, colluding with corrupt officials, and enabling cash movements for criminal networks. From the $115 million Diezani Alison-Madueke election scandal to commercial banks illegally warehousing NNPC revenue outside the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the pattern is unmistakable: banks are lubricating corruption.
Even more brazen were the bullion vans seen entering the residence of a top Lagos politician on the eve of an election — a reminder that banks provide logistical support for vote-buying. Cases involving executives of Skye Bank, Oceanic Bank, Keystone Bank, Intercontinental Bank, Union Bank, and Heritage Bank exposed insider fraud, illicit loans, and outright theft. These scandals are not aberrations. They are outcomes of contemporary ethical and moral degradation.
This dysfunction aligns with Friedrich Nietzsche’s warning: “When values collapse, the lowest instincts rise to the throne and call themselves moral.” Nigeria’s banking elite now perfectly embodies Nietzsche’s idea of master morality—a class that dominates, exploits, and reshapes social reality in order to preserve its power. The masses, meanwhile, are pushed into slave morality—conditioned to accept insecurity, scarcity, and corruption as the natural order of things. Their suffering becomes rationalised, normalised, and even spiritualised.
This mirrors Voltaire’s grim warning that “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” In Nigeria, the absurdity is the myth that the banking sector is a neutral financial institution; the atrocity is the insecurity that this illusion enables. As Karl Marx argued, oppressive conditions inevitably produce a “reserve army” of exploited youth—a generation driven into kidnapping, electoral fraud, and banditry by a system designed to keep them desperate. While bankers manipulate financial structures, launder public wealth, and enable criminal economies, ordinary citizens are left to endure the chaos that these elites manufacture and profit from.
Frantz Fanon foresaw this exact betrayal in The Wretched of the Earth when he warned that “the national bourgeoisie steps into the shoes of the former European settlers — doctors, lawyers, traders, agents, racketeers.” Nigeria’s banking class embodies this prophecy with chilling precision: a post-colonial elite that mimics former colonisers in greed, ruthlessness, and contempt for the poor.
They have become, to borrow George Orwell’s immortal line from Animal Farm, “the special animals” for whom all moral codes bend — because although all citizens are equal, some, as Orwell wrote, “are more equal than others.” These bankers are not mere financial administrators; they are architects of inequality, brokers of impunity, and gatekeepers of a system designed to enrich the few while impoverishing the many.
Michel Foucault’s theory of social construction deepens this understanding. Foucault argued that power is sustained by institutions that define what is “normal.” Nigerian banks have become such institutions. By controlling cash flow, access to credit, and the movement of money, they shape how Nigerians live, suffer, and adapt. Through Foucault’s “disciplinary power,” banks mould citizens into compliant economic subjects — enduring queues, failed transfers, artificial cash scarcity, arbitrary charges, and sudden shortages that conveniently appear before elections. This is not service failure. It is engineered dependency.
Insecurity thrives because cash flows thrive. Insurgents, kidnappers, political godfathers, and arms traffickers all depend on untraceable funds. Banks supply this bloodstream of chaos — knowingly or otherwise. You cannot fight kidnapping while banks quietly facilitate ransom payments. You cannot fight corruption when banks cannot (or will not) monitor, track, and publish cash movements. You cannot build a functioning democracy while the same financial institutions bankroll vote-buying syndicates before every election.
Peter Tosh was prophetic when he said, “We’ve got to find a solution to this pollution,” for Nigeria’s insecurity is not spiritual—it is financial pollution, pumped daily into the streets by banks. This is why Nigeria needs not cosmetic reform, but revolutionary reconstruction- deliberate, radical, value-driven rebuilding of a broken society from its foundations.
Peter Tosh was prophetic when he said, “We’ve got to find a solution to this pollution,” for Nigeria’s insecurity is not spiritual — it is financial pollution, pumped daily into the streets by the banks. This is why Nigeria does not need cosmetic reform but revolutionary reconstruction: a deliberate, radical, value-driven rebuilding of a broken society from its foundations. Africa has witnessed such transformations before. Thomas Sankara cut elite excess, dismantled corruption networks, and built self-reliance. Jerry Rawlings cleaned Ghana’s financial rot with fearless discipline. Muammar Gaddafi challenged monetary imperialism with a gold-backed African currency. Ibrahim Traoré is now confronting France’s financial dominance with unapologetic sovereignty. All understood a simple truth: Control the money, control the nation.
Like John Lennon, I “Imagine” Nigeria must uproot — not refurbish — its banking system. Institutions built on corruption cannot be disinfected; they must be rebuilt on ethical foundations enforced with revolutionary courage. Until Nigeria dismantles master morality in finance and replaces it with integrity, accountability, and justice, the country will remain trapped in a vicious cycle where: Cash creates chaos. Chaos justifies power. Power protects cash. And the people remain the casualtiess
Imoh Uwem
A Red-Pilled Enlightenment Thinker forged in Slave Morality
Writes from the House of Exile