Sanusi: Nigeria has reservations about some Basel requirements

Nigeria doesn't accept all requirements of the Basel II and Basel III accords for banking regulation, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Lamido Sanusi said.

While 'they both have strong points' for regulating bank reserves, 'some of the quantitative elements where you effectively allow banks to run any kind of models and to calculate their own risk and capital,' fall short of what is needed, Sanusi said today in Cape Town. 'There still has to be some element of Basel I as far as that is concerned.'

Rules from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision requiring banks to hold enough capital to survive market turmoil without causing risk to the financial system, also known as Basel III, come into effect over the next five years.

Sanusi brought into office a wealth of experience in the risk management department of leading banks in Nigeria. He brought deft reforms in trhe banking industry that has laid a strong foundation for hitherto troubled Nigerian lenders.

Appointed central bank governor amid a debt crisis in Africa's largest oil producer 2009, Sanusi initiated reforms to rescue Nigeria's banking industry from near-collapse and fired the chief executives of eight lenders bailed out by the regulator. The government then set up the Asset Management Corp. of Nigeria to buy bad debt from banks.