Companies · Sterling Financial Holdings 

Two insiders put real money in. The filings don't say why.

In one week in September 2026, two of Sterling Financial Holdings' most senior figures put a combined ₦1.53 billion of their own money into the company's stock. Neither gave a reason.

December 2024. Sterling completed a ₦75 billion private placement, raising ₦73.86 billion net. ₦68.8 billion went to Sterling Bank, ₦5 billion to The Alternative Bank. It was the opening move in a recapitalisation programme forced on every Nigerian bank by the Central Bank.

2025. A ₦28.79 billion rights issue followed, oversubscribed by ₦10.29 billion. Regulators approved ₦26.639 billion of it. The excess was restructured into a private placement. An ₦88 billion public offer came after that, in October, also oversubscribed.

January 2026. Final regulatory approvals arrived. By February, Sterling confirmed both Sterling Bank and The Alternative Bank were fully recapitalised, ahead of the March 2026 industry deadline. Across the two years, the group had injected ₦153 billion into its two banking subsidiaries.

July 2026. Half-year results arrived. Profit after tax up 20.4%, to ₦50.30 billion. Gross earnings up 31.5%, to ₦279.6 billion. Total assets up 19.3%, to ₦4.67 trillion. Customer deposits reached ₦3.62 trillion, loans and advances ₦1.61 trillion.

Underneath the growth sat something less comfortable. Credit impairment charges jumped from ₦5.21 billion to ₦23.85 billion, more than four times the year before. The non-performing loan ratio held at 4.7%.

Then came September.

September 9. Black Rising Ltd, an entity related to Abubakar Suleiman, bought 15 million Sterling shares at ₦7.50 each.

September 11. Black Rising bought again. 78.8 million shares, at ₦7.55. The two purchases together were worth about ₦705 million. Suleiman is a non-executive director of Sterling Financial Holdings who remains Managing Director and CEO of Sterling Bank, the group's conventional banking subsidiary.

September 14. Black Rising bought a third time. 62.28 million shares, at ₦7.55, worth about ₦470 million.

September 15. Seven Degrees North Ltd, an entity related to Group Managing Director and CEO Yemi Odubiyi, bought 46.26 million shares at ₦7.60, worth about ₦351.6 million.

Four transactions. One week. About 202.34 million shares. ₦1.53 billion. The purchases landed around ₦7.50 to ₦7.60 a share, while Sterling had just finished the two-year capital-raising cycle its own regulator demanded, and while its profit and its balance sheet were both growing.

There's a number in Sterling's own accounts worth setting next to that timing. At December 2025, total liabilities stood at about ₦3.50 trillion against assets of ₦3.92 trillion. That's a liabilities-to-assets ratio of roughly 0.89. Calling that "debt" would be misleading. Most of those liabilities are customer deposits, not corporate borrowing. There's a separate ₦612 billion in off-balance-sheet contingent liabilities too, guarantees, letters of credit, performance bonds, none of it crystallised into an actual liability at year-end. By March 2026, that figure had grown to roughly ₦930 billion.

None of it explains why the insiders bought.

September wasn't the start of insider buying at Sterling either. Seven Degrees North had already bought 82 million shares in December 2025, at ₦7.05. It bought 20.82 million more in August 2025, at ₦6.80. What changed in September wasn't that insiders started buying. It was how much, and how fast, two of them did it at once.

Sterling spent two years asking its own shareholders for capital to survive a regulator-mandated recapitalisation. In September, two of the people running it put their own money back into the same stock, at a price nobody made them pay. The filings record exactly what they bought, when, and for how much. They don't record why. What's left is the same set of numbers anyone else can read, a recapitalised bank, growing profit, rising credit provisions, a deposit-heavy balance sheet, and two insiders who looked at all of it and decided they wanted more.