Assessment of Survivors’ Perceptions of Crises and Retrenchments in the Nigeria Banking Sector

Using the Neo Liberal and Organizational Justice theories as the theoretical framework, this study assesses the perceptions of bank employees who survived of the crises and retrenchment that swept across the Nigerian banking sector. Four banks were purposively selected for the study. Two out of these four banks, namely: First Bank Nigeria Plc. (FBN) and United Bank for Africa Plc. (UBA), are among the old generation banks (OGB), while the other two: Access Bank and Eco Bank are new generation banks (NGB). A total of 256 employees of these banks selected through the simple random sampling technique constituted the samples for the study, while questionnaires and in-depth interviews (IDIs) were used as data collection instruments. Frequency percentage distribution formed the main tool of statistical analysis. Findings revealed that the popular perception among the survivors both in in NGB and OGB is that the crises were aggravated by poor corporate governance, and corrupt practices by the Executive Management of some banks. Also, though survivors perceived the reforms introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria in response to the crises as having functioned to quell the crises, a large proportion of them, 83% in OGB, and 82% in NGB still blamed the crises for the large-scale job losses in the sector. Findings further revealed that these surviving employees, mainly those of NGB indicated not having control over the retrenchment procedures and outcomes. Consequently, they perceived the retrenchment process as unfairly executed, leaving them with a sense of uncertainty and job insecurity. The study concluded that there is clear need for bank management to display integrity in retrenchment decisions while also maintaining fairness in dealing with survivors. Keywords: Crises, Retrenchment, Survivors, Perception, Banking Sector.