Tunde Ayeni

The name on the Skye Bank charge sheet is the same one that appeared in EFCC custody in 2016. Ten years later he is at Kuje. That is not a footnote. That is the story of how Nigeria handles its elite financial controversies.

Tunde Ayeni is 63. He is a lawyer by training, with over 35 years of practice according to his defence team. He is also a politician. Closely associated with Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP's Bayelsa network. His route into banking came through that political world. So did the acquisition deals that his bank allegedly financed.

Before the current 17-count charge, Ayeni had already been in EFCC custody twice. First in 2016, shortly after Skye Bank's board was removed, when investigators were examining his transactions linked to the bank. Then again in connection with a separate matter involving Aso Savings and Loans and a former FCT minister.

Neither of those episodes produced a charge sheet that reached trial. They produced custody, questioning, and then release. The current charge sheet is dated April 28, 2026. It is the first time Ayeni has stood before a judge and been asked to say guilty or not guilty to specific counts.

He said not guilty to all seventeen.

What his record shows is less about guilt or innocence than about a particular kind of career. One that becomes possible in Nigeria when political access and banking chairmanship sit in the same hands. During the Skye Bank era, Ayeni's acquisitions were funded through the bank's lending. Electricity distribution companies, telecoms assets. When those businesses performed poorly, the non-performing loans sat on the bank's books. When the loans became unrecoverable, the bank's ratios deteriorated. When the ratios hit the floor, the CBN intervened.

That is the sequence. Whether it was criminal is what the court will decide. Whether it was the kind of thing the system enabled and then chose not to address for a decade is a different question. And the answer to that one doesn't need a verdict.

Ayeni has a bail hearing on May 13. He will argue that he is a lawyer, a professional of standing, and a man who should be trusted to appear. He may well be right.

The depositors whose money allegedly moved through the suspense account will not appear in court. They were never asked to.