Julius Berger Nigeria Plc, the country’s foremost engineering construction company, which recently announced a strategic change of guard at the topmost echelon of its board of directors last Wednesday in Abuja, formally unveiled its new Chairman, Mr. Mutiu Sunmonu.
The company’s spokesman, Mr. Moses Duku, had earlier in March of this year announced Sunmonu’s appointment as the new chairman of the company with effect from April 1, 2016.
At the change-of-baton event which held at the Congress Hall of the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, the outgoing chairman AVM Nurudeen Imam who had served on the board of the company for more than sixteen years thanked the company for the opportunity given to him to serve. In his speech, Imam said that on the board, he felt “significantly fulfilled to have worked with one of the finest corporate teams any director or chairman could wish to work with.”
Imam also celebrated his successor at the event.
He stated that in his considerable military, administrative and business management experience, “I can assure you that nothing brightens the heart of a retiring officer than the knowledge that he has a worthy, competent, capable and ready-to-step-up successor. I believe that in my successor, our company is in capable and safe hands”. He described Sunmonu as “an energetic member of a younger generation whose trajectory looks good and set to improve upon the achievements of generations of past leadership of (the) Company”. Sunmonu, Imam added, represents a bold new hope and worthy new leadership for Julius Berger. He wished the in-coming chairman a healthy, prosperous and successful tenure in office.
Also speaking at the event, the Acting MD of Julius Berger, Mr. George Marks celebrated the accomplishments of the former chairman whom he fondly calls Nura. According to Mr. Marks, who said that “Julius Berger stands for strong corporate values”, key corporate milestones achieved during the chairmanship of AVM Nura Imam include being a driving force in modernising the company’s Board practices such as, review of Articles of Association, enlargement of number of Board Members, strict compliance with the rules of the Code of Corporate Governance, increase of the company’s Board Governance through the initiation of several new Board Committees, such as the Risk and Asset Management Committee; the Remuneration Committee; the Statutory Audit Committee; and other necessary ad-hoc or special purpose committees. Marks also noted that at the strategic level, Imam, besides leading an expansion of JBN’s clients’ portfolio into the private sector both locally and internationally, also witnessed and supported the growth and diversification of the JBN Service-Group portfolio to 7 subsidiaries.
