By Amos Adetunji
Is the government-appointed leadership at Union Bank failing because they cannot think differently, or because they have quietly turned the bank into a pharaoh’s tomb? That is the question now hanging over Yetunde Oni, and it is the only way to explain why a 108-year-old institution with size, history, trust, and a branch in almost every local government still moves like a bank waiting to be buried instead of one preparing to be reborn
The controversy is immediate and it cuts two ways. The first explanation is about capability. Critics argue that this team simply does not know how to think differently. Their background is in regulation, compliance, and asset protection, not in building digital platforms, acquiring Gen Z customers, or re-pricing risk at scale. The proof, they say, is in the absence of architecture. Years into the CBN mandate to stabilize and sell the bank, there is still no bold digital proposition to compete with ALAT or Kuda, no aggressive fee-income push, no branch rationalization with real targets, and no public timeline for raising capital. The only financials the public has seen in years were miserable: thin capital, weak assets, erratic profits. Yet there have been no stretch goals, no ROE commitment, and no leverage of 300+ branches and millions of accounts. Instead, the bank is being run like a denominator manager. Grow assets just enough to look busy. Keep costs just low enough to avoid questions. Keep impairments just contained enough to stay within forbearance. It is run-of-the-mill banking. It keeps the lights on, but it leaves the bank helpless.
The second explanation is about incentive, and it is darker. It argues that the team does know what to do, but they think and behave like laborers hired to build the pharaoh’s tomb. In ancient Egypt, pharaohs ordered tombs so intricate that no thief could ever find the wealth inside. The workers knew that once the tomb was finished, they would be killed. That was how the secret was kept. So progress was always slow. When the pharaoh asked, “Are we done yet?” the answer was always, “Not yet, my lord. A few more years.” That is exactly how Union Bank in 2026 feels. The link is direct: the government appointed this team to turn the bank around and make it attractive for new investors. But a quick turnaround means the bank gets sold. And the moment the bank is sold, the same managers who did the work are out of a job. So success for the bank equals redundancy for them. There is no reward for finishing fast. There is only risk. As a result, they delay, they manage to the minimum, and they keep the tomb open.
That risk is further protected by darkness. For years Union has not published timely, full financial statements. From the one set available, the picture was poor: thin capital, weak asset quality, and erratic profitability. Without regular disclosure there is no market discipline, no analyst heat, and no depositor scrutiny. Leadership can hide the true health of the bank and manage to the minimum. In that comfort, ambition dies. Why redesign risk, sell non-core assets, or launch a credible digital product if the upside goes to the buyer next year? Why publish uncomfortable numbers if no one is forcing you to? The result is a culture of maintenance, not transformation. Committees meet. Consultants present. But the hard calls — decisive write-downs, asset sales, talent upgrades, a new value proposition — never get made. The tomb stays unfinished on purpose.
Whether the problem is incapacity or incentive, the outcome is the same: stasis. Union still has things worth saving — a national brand, a wide footprint, and deep customer relationships — but assets without conviction decay. The absence of public financials removes accountability. The absence of stretch removes ambition. Together they have turned a once-dominant bank into a placeholder, managed for survival instead of for relevance.
The government keeps asking, “Are we done yet?” And from inside, the answer keeps being, “Not yet, my lord.” A real turnaround will only begin when two things change. First, the people tasked with it must have skin in the game, so that finishing the work is not an act of self-sabotage. Second, the lights must be turned on. Regular, audited publication of financials would end the complacency. Public scrutiny would force stretch, force leverage, and force the team to stop managing denominators and start owning an outcome.
Until those two things change — ownership and transparency — Union Bank will remain suspended between two accusations: a leadership that cannot think differently, or a leadership that has chosen to keep the tomb open.
How did Union Bank get into this mess? For decades it was Nigeria’s crown jewel. It had the license, the balance sheet, and the brand equity that no fintech could buy overnight. What it never developed was the capacity to imagine a different future. In Thinking Differently, the warning is clear: companies do not die because they are small. They die when “top management is asleep at the switch” as the future crashes in. Union has crashed twice. First in 2009, when weak risk governance nearly wiped it out. Again in the last decade, when fintechs and agile rivals moved the basis of competition from branches and deposits to data, speed, platforms, and experience. Both times Union had the resources. Both times it lacked the imagination. It stayed too big without stretch, too comfortable protecting what it had to notice that the game had changed.
The cost of that failure is now in the numbers you can feel, even when you cannot see them. Revenue growth is stagnant. Margins are shrinking. Young customers are leaving. Talent is draining out. Technology is outdated. The brand still commands trust, but it no longer commands growth. This is not a liquidity shock. It is the cumulative result of a profit engine that was never rebuilt. Instead of out-imagining competitors, foreshortening migration paths, and cannibalizing its own model, Union clung to an old definition of banking. The engine sputtered, and management spent the last few years firefighting instead of regenerating strategy. Without a new “opportunity horizon,” the bank has been forced back into the same cycle of cost cuts and rescue capital that defines laggards. Not thinking differently did not just cost market share. It ran the profit engine to the ground.
