Exposed: How Nigerian Banks are Now Turning Their Female Staff to Prostitutes

It has become very evident that there appears to be a flagrant uneagerness by the banking industry to attempt redeeming itself from the grave and obvious danger of sinking very low in the esteem of decent people. Today, most people are wont to draw parallels between female bankers and the growing pack of unprincipled actresses, and between the banking industry and the fast becoming scummy pond we call our home video industry. This is most unfortunate, because, before now, the hallowed precincts of the banks epitomized the cherished ideals of civility, responsibility, decency and scruples.

We already know what to expect from an emerging brand of actors and actresses whose uninhibitable and licentious ambience often offers very alluring incentives to become celebrated weirdoes. We can appreciate their desperation; a desperation born out of the thirst to, in so short a time, hit a box-office ! success in a circle perennially plagued with aridity of clear imagination.

And because society has in excess supply voyeurs and men and women of obscene tastes, the tendency is to avoid the long tortuous trajectory of tasking the intellect to realize well-plotted drama, and relapse into the cold refuge of a filthy short-cut. The result is the unedifying sight of a bunch of actresses pulling off their dresses in order to feast the famished eyes of lustful men and even women. Of course, I am told that these hare-brained strippers are the "real professionals", who are only "interpreting" accurately their roles. One of them has been shouting herself hoarse that she has the support of her parents and her "pastor".

As if all these Edo "bush-meats" being periodically bundled back from Italy do not also have the support of their parents and their "pastors". Or as if these bunch of over-bleached flesh that swoop on you like rapacious vampires as early as 6.30 pm once you apply the br! eaks along Adeniran Ogunsanya Street, or Allen Avenue, Lagos, to beckon a bread vendor do not also have the support of their parents and their "pastors." The point is that I do not see any difference between all these categories of women. May be, what can be said is that some are more dignified than the others. But the truth is hard to deny that they are all using what they have to secure what they want.

That is why it must be painful exercise to many who are now forced to lump female employees of our banks, especially, the so-called "new generation" variety, into this pack. Sometimes, it is difficult to discern the real problem of women. One moment they seem to be proclaiming through their actions: Please, I am too cheap! With just a few notes you can have all of me! Just for the asking! Then the next moment, they are grumbling that men do not rate them highly. So, what are we really going to do?

But then the bank is the last place one would have expected to witness this malaise. It is difficult to visit any of these banks, especially, the so-called "new generation" variety, and not feel thoroughly disgusted. The other day, a friend went to one of these banks in Lagos, and was offered a seat by a merry, cheerful, flesh-advertising female employee. He turned down the gesture and offered instead to be attended to downstairs. When asked why, his reply was straight- forward: "I don’t sit with naked women!"

It is indeed very painful that our banks would come to this sorry state in their pursuit of huge but of course dirty profits. The way women, young and old, hop about in these banks with skimpy skirts that barely cover their crotches, and blouses with necks cut low enough to rudely flaunt bulging boobs at your face, is sickening. I am told that the more female flesh you expose, the more fat deposits you attract. That is the new trend in jet-age banking. The other day, a staff of one of these banks came to my office to see a colleague on official matters. She might as well have not bothered to wear any skirt at all because the one she wore hardly covered anything. She was fair, very fair.

She may also be said to be pretty. I am told that she is married with one or two kids. My colleague told me that he had tried to ask her why it was necessary to appear that indecent. She had tried to utter ! some blurred babble about company policy, corporate image, smart appearance, customer-impressing robes and all such gibberish. Her husband, she said, used to complain initially, but has since got used to it. Poor man, his wife probably picks most of the bills. My colleague tried to talk about God and his attitude towards such obscenity. But the lady snapped back: she is born-again; she worships with one of those Chapel of This or Cathedral of That, or This and That Assembly that populate every cranny of Lagos. Her Bible of course was in her bag.

I guess that her "pastor" does not talk about Christ’s promise of a milestone being hung on people’s neck and they being dumped into the sea if they go ahead to cause people to sin. To be fair to the woman, she did confess that she does not really enjoy those outfits, but then what will she do? She must keep her high-paying job. Well, the funds are rolling in; the "pastor" is there giving an encouraging smile and some warped rational! izations, and the naïve husband at home is not complaining, so why on earth should the bird-brained doll of a woman allow any prick on her long dead conscience? That there are pastors today who encourage these obscene dressers can only vindicate the trite view that human beings of the identically dirty minds necessarily congregate together to worship their god, which is certainly not the holy God that made the heaven and earth. So, from a New Generation Bank to New Generation ‘Church’.

Talk of depraved beasts of the same hue necessarily stalking together. But only God knows how many men who had urgently visited the prostitute after ogling at this shameless lady because of her vulgar dressing. Only God knows the trouble she had caused to so many emotionally immature men. Indeed, her so-called pastor may not tell her this, but she must pay for it on the day of reckoning. And that would come pretty soon. Please, let us not be deceived, the devil has populated the world with his! children parading themselves as ‘funky pastors’. Beware! The consolation, however, is that if there is the bad, then, there is also the good. That there are adulterated goods does not foreclose the abundant existence of the genuine ones.

It appears that these banks are determined to take full advantage of their human (female) resources. I heard of a lady sent to "persuade" a chief executive to make a deposit in her bank. Though she was dressed in the usual "persuasive" attire, she still had vestiges of her morals intact. The chief executive was willing to make the deposit, but on one condition: the lady must let him see beyond her mini-skirt for a weekend at his hotel room. As he said it, unabashed, a fatuous smile played on his lips.

But the lady thought this was unfair, shameful, in fact an insult. She reported back to her manager and expected an outrage against such an unholy demand. But the manager had a different opinion. Looking straight into the lady’s face he said: "I don’t know what you are talking about. But let not this bank lose that deposit. How you do it is your business." Of course the lady perfectly understood her manager. She also detected the veiled threat. And she did not want to lose her job either. Well the end of the story is that her bank got that deposit. And the lady got a commendation and bonus. Do not ask me whether she is married to some unsuspecting fool of a man somewhere who is busy luxuriating in the deceptively pleasant feelings that his wife brings home a fat pay-packet every other month. That is the rot, the decay, the stench, the slime that now goes for banking policy. And this lady i! s just one in a thousand cases, in which women are now compelled to compromise their morals and marital fidelity, yes to hawk their bodies to rake in huge profits into their bank’s coffers.

How can Nigeria, and indeed many other nation just sit still and watch some boardroom tin gods turn people’s wives and daughters into corporate pros titutes? Some ladies of loose morals who have found their ways into these banks are making it big? They are faring better than their counterparts who hang out in the evenings at Allen Avenue, rushing at your car like a brood of vultures or bunch of determined hawkers of sub-standard or contaminated wares. The corporate colour, which these banks give them, enhances their prices. As they are doing well for their banks, so they are also doing well for themselves. And nobody is complaining. Many have metamorphosed from forced, conscripted victims to eager, solicitous whores.

It is that bad. Truth is: a whore is a whore, whether found in the hallowed precincts of a bank or at an unlit corner of a dingy street at Isale-Eko. They are united by their p! ossession of the same qualities: cheapness, worthlessness, indecency, disposableness and valuelessness. And since the banks are happy and the ladies are picking the bills at home, no row is made. Perhaps somebody will tell me that this is feminism, and that these women are introducing a revolution that will make them rule the financial sector, and wrest it from the domineering hands of men. Assuming they will not become HIV-positive before achieving that feat, what with the emerging fact that condoms are no longer an effective protection against AIDS.

Somebody must put a halt to all these. Can’t some of the women who still have their morals intact organize themselves and say NO to this madness? Can’t all these women groups who are dissipating their energies campaigning for a perennially vaporous woman president force these banks to the path of decency and level playing? Must the easiest way of becoming a corporate prostitute be to get an employment in a new generation bank and insist on working at the Marketing Division or The Customer Services Section where you would be sent once in a while to one Chief Executive to "persuade" him to deposit some huge sums in your bank? But assuming the Chief Executive is a woman? Should these banks then send her a smashing young dandy to seduce her off her hard-line posture? How dirty!

Sometimes, when women complain of marginalization and relegation, I tend to blame them for it. They are the ones who are eager to prove to men that they are too cheap, in fact, cheaper than "pure water". The few of them who still hold their heads high and remain on the side of decency are considered odd. Thank God, we still have this few. But they are too few to convince me that woman is still not the world’s cheapest commodity.