With the official completion of its 24-month banking sector recapitalization program, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has confirmed that 33 of the nation’s licensed banks have fully met the updated minimum capital requirements that were implemented in March 2024.
The top bank has called the initiative, which forced Nigerian banks to raise a total of N4.65 trillion in fresh capital, one of the biggest structural interventions in the history of the nation’s financial system.
The CBN stated in a statement released on Wednesday that all banks in Nigeria are still fully operational and that there will be no interruptions to customer service throughout the 24-month exercise.
The central bank emphasized that depositors’ money is still safe.
According to the CBN’s notification, 33 banks have fully satisfied the updated minimum capital requirements.
Only four banks are still subject to continuing legal and regulatory proceedings.
In describing these situations, the central bank was straightforward: they do not constitute systemic issues and are being handled by established legal and supervisory procedures.
The unresolved issues were described by industry and legal sources who are familiar with the procedure as procedural in nature, court and regulatory procedures that are a typical component of any intricate, multi-institution compliance exercise of this kind.
All four institutions are still conducting business as usual, processing transactions and providing unrestricted client service.
In order to provide total openness on the results of the exercise across all levels of the industry, the CBN has stated that a thorough breakdown of banks by license category—commercial, merchant, regional, and non-interest—will be posted on its website in due course.
Analysts have pointed out that one of the recapitalization exercise’s distinguishing characteristics is that it was carried out without causing any of the disruption that has typified earlier structural interventions in the Nigerian banking industry.
The 2024–2026 exercise was intended to enable institutions to raise capital through a variety of mechanisms, rights issues, public offers, mergers and acquisitions, within a structured 24-month window, in contrast to the 2005 consolidation, which resulted in a significant number of bank failures and forced mergers under extreme time pressure.
According to the CBN, the outcome is a sector with improved capital adequacy ratios (CAR) that now surpass global Basel criteria. The minimum CAR criteria are still set at 10% for national and regional banks and 15% for banks with international authorization. These measures bring Nigeria’s banking supervision standards into line with those used in major financial hubs across the world.
The recapitalization was carried out concurrently with a smooth withdrawal from the regulatory forbearance agreements that had permitted certain institutions to postpone the recognition of specific balance sheet issues.
Now that the exit is complete, the CBN’s certified increases in capital sufficiency show true underlying financial health rather than a picture of controlled accounting.
According to the CBN, this has enhanced asset quality throughout the industry, strengthening balance sheet transparency and the veracity of reported financial positions.
This has significant implications for counterparties, investors, and analysts evaluating Nigerian banks: the figures finally make sense.
The top bank also stated that its framework for risk-based capital adequacy has been reinforced, requiring banks to maintain suitable capital buffers and perform frequent stress tests across specified scenarios.
According to officials, this supervisory architecture is intended to guarantee that the capital gains obtained through recapitalization are actively maintained rather than being attained and kept constant.
The quality of implementation may be more important to institutional watchers than the actual capital levels in Wednesday’s release.
A significant demonstration of regulatory and institutional competence is provided by a 24-month, sector-wide compliance program involving 37 licensed banks, capital raising equal to a sizable portion of Nigeria’s financial system assets, and a simultaneous exit from regulatory forbearance, all without a single day of disruption to banking services.
It is anticipated that the four banks currently undergoing legal and regulatory procedures would eventually resolve such issues. There are distinct routes for every situation in the central bank’s supervision system. By all measures, the industry as a whole has met the standards set for it.
According to the CBN, it is still dedicated to creating a financial system that is resilient, transparent, and stable so that investors, depositors, and the general public can feel confident.
That promise now has a much firmer foundation, at least structurally, with 33 institutions completely compliant, all banks operating, and the supervisory architecture enhanced.
