Banking Sector Reform: An Approach to Restoring Public Confidence on the Nigerian Banking Industry

Loss of public confidence in the banking system occurs when a bank or some banks in the system experience illiquidity or insolvency resulting in a situation where depositors fear the loss of their deposits and a consequent break down of contractual obligations that results in runs on the bank. This work used the various components of bank deposit liabilities to empirically analyze and ascertain if the 2005 bank reform has promoted or engendered public confidence on the Nigeria’s banking system. To test for a significance difference for the 2005 banking reform in restoring public confidence in the banking industry, the contributions of the decomposed deposit liability of demand, savings and fixed deposits to the total deposit liability of the Nigerian banking industry were evaluated for pre and post performances for the Nigerian banking industry using the parametric statistical pooled variance t test model to test for a significant difference. From the test of hypotheses the research presented in this paper concludes as follows: that there is no significant difference in the contribution of the demand deposit to the total deposit liability of the Nigerian banking industry after the 2005 banking sector reform; that there is a significant difference in the contribution of the time deposit to the total deposit liability of the Nigerian banking industry after the 2005 banking sector reform; and that there is a significant difference in the contribution of the savings deposit to the total deposit liability of the Nigerian banking industry after the 2005 banking sector reform. Keywords: Nigeria; banking industry; banking reform; public confidence restoration; deposit liabilities