NBCC, KPMG ex-Boss Chart Course for Successful Business Succession

Dike Onwuamaeze

The President of Nigeria British Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), Mr. Abimbola Olashore, and former Chairman of KPMG Africa, Mr. Kunle Elebute, has declared that leadership transition is no longer optional but a necessity, warning that businesses that failed to groom successors would be faced with risk of collapse.

They stated this yesterday in Lagos at the NBCC Breakfast Meeting with the theme “Succession, Planning, Passing the Baton.”

Olashore said: “The theme could not be timelier. Across boardrooms, organisations, and even nations, one pressing question persists: who will carry the vision forward? Leadership is not measured by tenure but by transition. It is not merely about reaching the summit but about ensuring that others can continue the climb after us.”

Elebute, who was also the Senior Partner at KPMG Nigeria, said that owners and leaders who desire their business to succeed beyond you’re their time and still thriving should be deliberate in embracing corporate governance, picking leaders in the right way and investing on leaders of tomorrow, etc.

He said: “These are the building block for every successful business. Owners must be deliberate about what they want to do with their business and that for me is the key driving force about business succession, leadership and investing in people.” If you do not get it right there is noting that you can do. The market will just take you out and nobody cares that you are no longer around.”

He also said that the major challenge bout business succession are the chief executive officers (CEOs) if they have no plan to leave the business when they ought to.

“They are biggest impediment to succession. But in a company where the CEO has made up his mind that he is going to leave this place at a particular time you will find that they are deliberate about who to succeed them, and the objective of that succession is that the business must thrive more even when he was no longer the CEO.

“If you have a CEO that does not want to go, what he will do is to destroy the business. He would probably hand over to his lackey who will be running to his home to ask him what should be done,” he said.