LAGOS—Nigeria's central bank has published a list of the largest defaulting customers of five banks rescued in a $2.6 billion bailout and warned the debtors to pay up or face legal action.
The list of more than 200 companies, individuals and state bodies includes scores of stockbrokers and local oil and gas firms as well as larger companies including conglomerates Transcorp and Dangote Industries and fuel distributors African Petroleum and Oando Plc.
"It has become necessary to use this medium to request the following defaulting customers of the affected banks to pay without further delay their indebtedness, failing which the banks will take all appropriate legal actions to ensure repayment," the central bank said in a statement.
"These are the largest debtors and the CBN will continue to publish the list of defaulters on an on-going basis."
The central bank last Friday injected 400 billion naira ($2.6 billion) into Afribank, Finbank, Intercontinental Bank, Oceanic Bank and Union Bank and sacked their chief executives.
The banks had notched up bad loans totalling 1.14 trillion naira ($7.6 billion) and the regulator said lax governance had left them so weakly capitalised that they posed a threat to the banking system in sub-Saharan Africa's second biggest economy.
The list of defaulters also included the governments of Delta state in the oil-producing Niger Delta and the southeastern state of Ebonyi, as well as the judiciary of Bauchi state and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.
