Wednesday, September 24, 2025 - Fourteen financial banks in Nigeria have met their March 2026 recapitalization requirement, according to the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso.
Cardoso disclosed this on Tuesday, September 23, in a
briefing after the 302nd Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja.
He said the Nigerian banking sector remained strong and
resilient.
Cardoso, however, did not mention the names of the banks
that have met the recapitalization requirements.
During the 301st MPC meeting in July 2025, Cardoso had said
eight banks had met CBN’s minimum capital requirements.
The ICIR reports that the last major bank
recapitalisation exercise in Nigeria was in 2004, when the CBN raised the
minimum capital requirement for all banks from two billion Naira to N25
billion.
This was a significant increase that led to a major
consolidation in the banking sector, as the number of banks was reduced from 89
to 25 through a series of mergers and acquisitions.
Recall that in March, the apex bank increased minimum
capital requirements for banks with a 2026 deadline.
The ICIR reported that the apex bank had set March 31,
2026, as the deadline for all the banks to raise their capital base,
giving a two-year period that started on April 1, 2024.
The apex bank pegged the minimum capital requirement for
commercial banks with international exposure at N500 billion, commercial banks
with national authorization at N200 billion, regional banks and merchant banks
at N50 billion, non-interest banks with national and regional operations at N20
billion and N10 billion, respectively.
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