Nigeria’s Bad Bank: Is AMCON a vital cure or a chronic affliction?

    BusinessDay | Newsletter | May 18, 2026    
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The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) was a child of necessity, birthed in 2010 as the defibrillator that would jolt Nigeria’s failing banking system back to life. When the global financial shock of 2008 compounded Nigeria's margin lending, lax supervision, spectacular bank collapse problems, the result was a banking sector drowning in toxic loans. At their peak, non-performing loans consumed 37.2 per cent of Nigerian banks' books, with bad loans reaching as high as N3.7 trillion. AMCON was modelled after successful international institutional frameworks, with clear core objectives to absorb the toxic, non-performing loans (NPLs) choking the banking sector after the 2008 global financial crisis, stabilize the financial ecosystem, and, afterwards, quietly wind up. As at November 2023, AMCON had injected as much as N2.2 trillion as financial accommodation, according to a BusinessDay Report. By these accounts, AMCON achieved its initial stabilisation objective.

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