Abstract

Journal of Banking, Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria.2010, Volume 4 No1 pp.1-24 The paper observed that the phenomenal distress in the banking industry over the years gives room for concern to existing investors, potential investors, government, monetary authorities and international communities with invested interest in Nigeria. The banking recapitalization exercise came as a swift wind of change that blew the Nigerian banking industry into a season of drastic restructuring. However, as plausible as the subsequent developments in the industry looks and indeed sound, the advent of several mergers and acquisition in a bid to meet the CBN’s 25billion capital base deadline soon began to breed several ethical issues that either escaped the scrupulous eyes of banking regulators or that were never envisaged. For some reasons however, the focus has been on codes of ethics and standards of best practices which were supposed to regulate and guide ethical practices. This study is thus embarked upon to explore the intricacies of corporate governance and financial reporting issues in the banking industry from an ethical perspective, such that the effectiveness of regulatory codes, standards and guidelines are adjudged. Questionnaires were used to gather data from the sampled representatives among the banks operating in the industry and the banking regulators to test the three sets of hypotheses using the analysis of variance test (ANOVA). The result thus revealed that the relatively strong Nigerian banking industry is currently being faced with diverse ethical issues despite the reformative demands of the consolidation exercise, though codes and standards guiding sound governance and ethical reporting have gone far, it may not be adequate to face the new ethical challenges in post-consolidation especially in the absence of an adequate equipped system of supervision. The paper concludes that there is the need therefore for the unification of ethical regulations to reduce the problem of legal enforcement to ensure compliance in governance and its consequent reporting. The workability of which will be made possible by a more practical and legally backed supervision-based regulation as opposed to the returns-analyzing and codes-based that has characterized the industry till date.