Ethics and Professionalism; the Current Challenges for Nigerian Banks

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue VIII, August 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Ethics and Professionalism; the Current Challenges for Nigerian Banks

Okere Peter. A Phd¹, Njoku Gospel O², Okere, Cletus O^3
1,2Dept. of Banking and Finance Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo-Ohaji, Nigeria
³Dept. of Accountancy, Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo-Ohaji, Nigeria

Abstract: The main objective of this study is to address the importance of ethics and professionalism in the banking industry in Nigeria more especially in this period of COVID-19 and also address the consequences of unethical and sharp practices in the banking industry. Banks in the modern day world, play an intermediary role between the deficit economic units and surplus economic units of the society, executing savings and investment functions. The protection of the rights and interests of numerous stakeholders is sine quo non for banking sector stability and the requirement for economic development and therefore, banks are expected to ethically pursue their operations in compliance with the principles of integrity, impartiality, reliability, transparency, social responsibility and denounce unethical and unprofessional practices. It is therefore recommended that the Central Bank of Nigeria should ensure tougher disciplinary measures against any erring bank staff as this could go a long way to further mitigate the rising trends of unethical and unprofessional practices in the Nigerian banking sector. The Institute of Bankers should also enforce full compliance of the Institute professional code of conduct in the banking industry in Nigeria.

Keywords: Ethics, Financial Intermediation, Financial sector, Professionalism.

I. INTRODUCTION

Banks play multifarious roles which include acting as financial intermediary between the surplus economic units and the deficit spending ones. The banking industry plays a major intermediation role in an economy by mobilizing savings from surplus units and channeling these funds to the deficit units, in particular private enterprises, for the purpose of expanding their production capacities. (Oghojafor et al. 2010). Consequently, for any bank to perform very well in its intermediation role, certain issue needs to be addressed especially in the areas of ethics and professionalism.

Over the past decades, the Nigerian banking industry has experienced significant growth, transformation and changes. A number of industry-wide restructuring has taken place over the years with resultant changes in the number of institutions, ownership structure, at one time proliferation of new generation banks, recurring banking failures, as well as significant changes in the complexity and scope of operations of the financial sector. Also, noteworthy has been various spate of changes in the regulatory framework of Nigerian financial sectors such as the era of bank liberalization of the late 1980s, implementation of universal banking, increase in capital base of Nigerian banks resulting in the banking sector consolidation of the 2000s etc. This era also witnessed the emergence of super mega banks in Nigeria (Adegbite et al, 2016)

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