It is the strangest occupation in Nigerian banking. A court has said: leave. The regulator has said: we are appealing, so we are staying. The owners have said: this is our bank. The managers appointed by the regulator have said: the bank is stable. And seven months after the recapitalisation deadline, the public still does not know who really owns Union Bank, who is really in charge of it, or whether the nearly three-year intervention has made it stronger or simply kept it in limbo.
That is the question at the heart of the Union Bank saga, and it did not start in 2026. It started on 10 January 2024, when the Central Bank of Nigeria dissolved the boards and managements of Union Bank, Keystone Bank and Polaris Bank, citing corporate governance lapses, regulatory breaches and deteriorating financial conditions. In Union Bank, it installed Yetunde Oni as Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer and Mannir Ubali Ringim as Executive Director, and a new board led by Bayo Adeleke.
The CBN’s case, as it has told it ever since, is that Union Bank was in severe distress. In its appeal papers, it says the bank had a negative capital adequacy ratio, a capital shortfall exceeding N224 billion, and elevated non-performing loans at the time of takeover. Later reports, citing a forensic audit that has never been fully published, alleged far worse: financial reporting manipulation, an unhedged $300 million Afreximbank facility allegedly transferred onto Union Bank’s balance sheet, and “unorthodox financial engineering” that allegedly produced a revaluation loss of N396 billion and interest and fees of more than N147 billion by the third quarter of 2025. Those allegations have not been tested in a criminal court, and no conviction has followed. But they are the moral foundation on which the CBN has justified its continued presence. 78a82527
The owners tell a completely different story. Titan Trust Bank, Luxis International and Magna International, who acquired Union Bank in 2022 from Atlas Mara and Union Global Partners, say they invested $190 million, sought approval to merge Titan Trust with Union Bank, and were then sanctioned and diluted without a fair hearing. They say the CBN-approved recapitalisation process diluted their ownership from 100 per cent to 40 per cent without any legal basis. 3cdf
On 25 March 2026, Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke of the Federal High Court, Lagos, agreed with them. In a judgment that ran to more than 150 pages, he held that the CBN acted beyond its powers, that the intervention was unlawful, unconstitutional and ultra vires, that it did not comply with Section 34 of the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act 2020, and that the shareholders had suffered a continuing injury because they were excluded from management between January 2024 and December 2025. He quashed all decisions and steps taken by the CBN-appointed board, ordered the immediate restoration of the former board led by Farouk Mohammed Gumel and its management, and prohibited the CBN and its appointees from taking any further steps towards recapitalisation. The court also, according to reports of the judgment, awarded $190 million to the shareholders. 218099be
That should have been the end of the Oni-led management. It was not.
Dissatisfied with the lower court’s decision, the CBN promptly filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal on 26 March 2026, to challenge and overturn the judgment. It raised 11 grounds, arguing that the lower court erred in law, misinterpreted BOFIA, and wrongly nullified the acts of the management it appointed. It also filed a motion for stay of execution, asking the court to restrain the reinstated directors from taking control, convening board meetings, entering the bank’s premises, or altering its governance structure, and from engaging in what it called prejudicial publicity. To prosecute the appeal, it assembled a team led by Yusuf Ali, SAN, with Kemi Pinheiro, SAN, Tunde Fagbohunlu, SAN, Uche Val Obi, SAN, and Chukwudi Enebeli, SAN, and later, according to reports, expanded it to over 15 Senior Advocates. a54c2591
Legally, an appeal plus a stay application does not automatically erase a judgment. Politically and practically, it has done exactly that. Since 26 March, the CBN-appointed management and board have continued to reign, at the expense, the owners argue, of the real owners. The CBN itself said so, in softer language, on the evening of the judgment: “The CBN assures the public that UBN’s status is unchanged and that it remains fully capable of meeting its obligations to customers, depositors, and all stakeholders.” In other words, the court said change, the regulator said continuity. 8410
This is where the critical question arises: is this a deliberate decision to sustain the Oni-led leadership in the bank even when, critics say, it has failed to raise the expected capital and transform the bank for other investors to take over?
The critics’ case is built on three silences. First, the silence on capital. The CBN’s own recapitalisation programme set a deadline of 31 March 2026. Seven months after that deadline, Union Bank, Keystone Bank and Polaris Bank remain short of the CBN’s N200 billion threshold for national authorisation, and have yet to announce definitive ownership changes, mergers or fresh capital injections. In the case of Union Bank, this is particularly damning to the critics, because recapitalisation was the stated purpose of the intervention. If after 33 months in charge, the appointed management has not delivered the capital that would allow a clean exit, what exactly has the intervention achieved, except the occupation itself? 6ce9
Second, the silence on results. The CBN maintains the banks are financially sound, and reports in April 2026, citing the same unnamed forensic audit, claimed that by the third quarter of 2025 the bank was already on its path to recovery, with many analysts expecting it to meet the N200 billion requirement. But the public has not been given audited, independently verifiable proof of that recovery. No full forensic report has been published. No detailed breakdown of how the alleged N224 billion shortfall was closed, or not closed, has been released. No transparent account of the recapitalisation programme that the court said diluted owners from 100 per cent to 40 per cent has been laid before the public. The bank continues to trade, it completed a merger with Titan Trust Bank on 1 September 2025, and it released UnionMobile 2.0 on 28 September 2026, but operational continuity is not the same as financial transformation. A bank can keep its doors open, pay depositors, and still be a long way from being recapitalised, sellable, and free of regulatory life support. 2527
Third, the silence on ownership. The September 2025 merger of Titan Trust into Union Bank was presented as a completion, but the judgment and the appeal have left the question of who owns what in a legal fog. The court said the CBN-appointed board’s decisions were void. The CBN says those decisions stand until the Court of Appeal says otherwise. In that fog, who can buy Union Bank? Which investor will put N200 billion or more into a bank whose board may be declared illegal tomorrow, whose recapitalisation may be declared void, whose owners may be restored with $190 million in damages? The occupation, critics argue, has become self-perpetuating: the longer the legal uncertainty lasts, the harder it is to find a buyer; the harder it is to find a buyer, the longer the CBN must stay to reassure depositors; the longer the CBN stays, the more the legal uncertainty deepens.
The CBN’s defenders have an answer, and it must be taken seriously. They argue that the intervention was not about ownership, it was about stability. That if the court’s order had been enforced immediately on 25 March, with two competing boards trying to enter the same premises, issue conflicting instructions, and convene rival meetings, depositors would have panicked. That BOFIA gives the Governor power under Section 34 to remove directors of a bank in critical condition, and that the lower court misread that power. That the forensic findings, if true, show the previous owners cannot be trusted to return. That the stay is not a power grab, but a legal pause to prevent chaos while the Court of Appeal decides a question of national importance: can a regulator’s power to save a bank be reviewed and reversed by a court two years later, unwinding everything done in between?
That argument is not without merit. Financial stability is a public good. A disorderly handover in a 107-year-old bank with millions of depositors would be reckless. But it also has a limit, and that limit is time and transparency. A temporary intervention that lasts 33 months, survives a judgment nullifying it, survives its own recapitalisation deadline, and still cannot show the public a clean balance sheet, a new owner, or a date for exit, stops looking temporary. It starts looking like administration by inertia.
Interpreted critically, the Oni-led management is therefore caught in a paradox it did not create but now embodies. If it is successful, it should be able to leave. If it cannot leave, it must show why. It cannot do both: claim the bank is stable and recovered, and also claim it still needs CBN protection. It cannot claim the recapitalisation was lawful, and also fail to complete it. It cannot claim the public is not in the dark, while the forensic audit remains unpublished, the recapitalisation figures remain unaudited in public, and the appeal remains undecided.
The owners’ paradox is equally real. They won in court, but they do not have the bank. They were awarded $190 million, but they cannot enforce it while the stay is pending. They say they were denied fair hearing, but the public has not heard a full, documented rebuttal from them of the $300 million Afreximbank allegation, the N396 billion revaluation loss, or the governance failures the CBN cited in January 2024. Winning a judgment on procedure is not the same as winning the argument on stewardship.
So how long will they occupy Union Bank, and in whose interest?
If the Court of Appeal upholds the Federal High Court, the occupation ends in law, but the practical handover will still be messy, because two years of contracts, mergers, staff decisions and customer agreements cannot be unwound with a court order. If the Court of Appeal overturns the judgment, the occupation is legitimised, but the CBN will then have to answer the harder question it has avoided: if its intervention was lawful all along, why has it not produced a recapitalised, privately owned Union Bank by now?
Until that appeal is heard, Union Bank remains in the worst of all worlds: a bank that is neither fully public nor fully private, neither fully under its owners nor fully free of them, neither fully recapitalised nor fully failed. A bank where the managers work under a judgment that says they should not be there, and the owners wait outside a building that a court said is theirs.
That is why the public is right to ask the question in the form you put it. Not just how long, but in whose interest. If the answer is depositors, then the CBN must publish the proof: the capital position, the audit, the recapitalisation plan, and the exit timetable. If the answer is the regulator’s own credibility, then the occupation is about saving face, not saving a bank. And if the answer is no one’s, if it is simply that Nigeria’s courts move slowly and its regulators move even more slowly, then Union Bank is not an exception. It is a warning.
A bank cannot be saved by keeping it in intensive care forever. At some point, the doctors must either discharge the patient or admit that the treatment has failed.
