Group Chairman of First Bank Holdings, Femi Otedola, has justified the company's decision to write off N748bn in legacy non-performing loans, saying the move was a deliberate strategy aimed at securing long-term financial stability, even though it significantly reduced reported profits.
Otedola made this known in a post on his X handle on Saturday, where he explained that the large-scale provisioning led to a 92 per cent drop in the holding company's profit figure.
According to the billionaire investor, the write-off was in line with the Central Bank of Nigeria's directive encouraging banks to confront non-performing loans openly instead of postponing the issue.
