Debanjo.code

Let me share a story that is obliquely related to this issue of manifestos… Many years ago, as a middle management staff at Access Bank, I was chasing a transaction that had the potential to turn my groups profitability and balance sheet around. The customer had landed a huge slate of contracts with the federal government. It would drive Billions in current account balances and fee fee income. They needed a guarantee from the bank. I made the case… wrote the credit analyses, presented the approval memoranda all the way to the management credit committee… Everything looked good on paper. Almost too good…and it was provisionally approved after some hard grilling by the committee. But after the meeting…My DMD at the time, the late Herbert Wigwe, called me to his office… “Justin, I want to meet this customer in person. Schedule a meeting for next week but don’t issue the offer letter until after” I was agitated…Haba…after all this wahala why can’t we just issue the guarantee and let me book my fees? But oga had spoken…so what to do? I did as instructed. We got to Abuja for this meeting as scheduled… Hebert was just ‘gisting’… I was expecting some hard hitting technical questions, like the ones I had been asked…maybe he just wanted to hear them himself ? But nah… just gist…about business, how he got started, what he thought about this and that and the other…some old transactions…with other banks…politics…his relationship with the government and other deals in the pipeline …everything under the sun…but the specifics of the transaction in question. Meeting ended. I’m confused. We’re on the way back to the airport and I’m waiting for Herbert to say something. Nothing. Just talking about my business in general…other things I was working on. I knew better than to ask what I was really waiting to hear. Then he drops the bomb just as we are landing in lagos. “Justin, we’re not doing it” I felt like exploding… He continued… “In the business of credit and banking, you will learn that willingness to repay is more important than the ability to repay…you will find other deals…” I was deflated, confused, angry… One guy from one of the top five banks that loves large ticket corporate deals did the transaction eventually. He got promoted for it… The customer diverted some of the proceeds and the whole thing went sideways. The guy also eventually got fired for it. The only time HW revisited the issue was one day we met in the elevator a couple years after, when the news of the matter broke. “Justin I’m sure you’re happy you didn’t do that transaction now” I didn’t have to ask which one he meant. How does any of this relate to manifestos? They are important and necessary for every candidate to have. They provide clarity and a baseline for how one can evaluate a candidate in a presidential election. But they tell you NOTHING about the CHARACTER of a candidate. They provide no insight into the most impactful attribute a leader should possess. That can only be judged by their actions. Their track record. How they have handled previous responsibility or conducted themselves historically. So by all means let’s have the manifestos and let’s critique them when they are made public by the candidates. But let us also examine their manifest character, as evidenced by their lives and conduct in the past. Otherwise the manifesto is hardly worth the paper it’s printed on End of. Continue to rest in peace HW.🙏🏾