A bank chairman stood in court on Monday accused of moving N15.6 billion of depositors' money into companies he controlled. The bank collapsed in 2016. The case reached court in 2026.

Tunde Ayeni used to be one of the most powerful men in banking Nigeria had never fully scrutinised. He was chairman of Skye Bank, and while he sat in that chair, the EFCC alleges he used the bank's suspense account as a personal transfer vehicle. Seventeen counts. N15.6 billion. Multiple tranches. Different company names, different accounts, same direction.

Here's what a suspense account is. Banks hold money in suspense accounts temporarily. Funds in transit, transactions being processed, items that need clearing. It is not a personal account. It does not belong to the chairman. It belongs to the people whose money is moving through it. The allegation is that Ayeni treated it differently.

The counts detail transfers to companies with names like Misa Limited, Capital Assets Limited, Harigold Ventures Limited, Union Registrar Limited. N3.2 billion to Misa Limited alone, across multiple transactions. N5.07 billion to Union Registrar. N850 million to Capital Field Investment. And one count that says he withdrew N2.475 billion in cash directly from the account.

Ayeni pleaded not guilty to all counts on Monday. His bail hearing is May 13. He is at Kuje Correctional Centre until then.

Now here is the part that requires a longer memory.

Skye Bank collapsed in 2016. The CBN walked in that July and removed the board. Ayeni was among those who went. The public statement at the time was careful. Regulatory intervention. Liquidity challenges. A new board to restore confidence. What the forensic investigation later showed was something else. Insiders had been borrowing heavily from the bank to fund their own acquisitions. Electricity distribution companies, telecoms assets, oil and gas operations. The bank was not financing the economy. In significant part, it was financing its own directors.

By 2018 the licence was revoked. Polaris Bank was created as a bridge bank to absorb the assets and liabilities. AMCON injected N786 billion of public money to make Polaris viable. That N786 billion came from somewhere. It came from the budget. From tax revenue. From the public account that belongs to the same people whose savings Skye Bank was holding.

The ordinary person in this story is not a character the charges name. She is the small business owner who kept her working capital at Skye Bank. The petty trader whose monthly collections sat in a savings account there. The civil servant whose salary was paid into a branch that stopped feeling stable. These people did not lose their deposits when Skye fell because Polaris absorbed them. But they paid for the rescue through the public funds that kept the bridge bank standing.

Ten years passed between the transactions in the charge sheet. Some are dated October 2014. Monday's arraignment was in May 2026. The money the prosecution alleges was moved went to companies. The bank whose suspense account it allegedly came from no longer exists. The depositors whose trust the account represented are now customers of a different bank, one the state had to build and fund to replace what was lost.

Ayeni sat in court. He said not guilty. The bail hearing is in eight days.

Nigeria's accountability system works slowly when it works at all. The question is not whether Ayeni is guilty. That is for the court. The question is what a ten-year gap between alleged act and trial tells you about how seriously Nigeria treats the people who hold ordinary Nigerians' money.

The judge will answer one question. The gap answers another one already.