FINANCE 1
The Nigerian banking industry has passed through different phases, especially in the 21st Century, in response to the changing dynamics of the Nigerian economy. Therefore, as the industry continues to produce different sets of chief executives who hand over batons of leadership to their successors, in compliance with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy of good corporate governance, Festus Akanbi, in this report, beams his searchlight on some former Bank MDs and their survival strategies after their tenures
The evolution of banking operations in Nigeria, which occurred during the colonial period was a child of necessity.
It started with the establishment of colonial banks, with the primary aim of meeting the commercial needs of the Colonial Government. Beginning from the establishment of the African Banking Corporation, and the Bank of British West Africa, now First Bank of Nigeria in 1892, (which served as precursors to banks like Barclays Bank and the British and French Bank for Commerce and Industry, which metamorphosed into the United Bank for Africa), banking in Nigeria has continued to play a very important role in the nation’s economy.
As the industry continued to wax strong, banks became evenly distributed across the country, with the attendant challenges.
Banking became hugely profitable and the industry began to attract the best brains from the nation’s higher institutions and competing sectors of the Nigerian economy.
However, many former bank MDs resigned voluntarily to pursue other dreams.
Today, the list of bank chiefs doing well in other lines of business is long. These banking icons include names like Atedo Peterside, Pascal Dozie, Fola Adeola, Jim Ovia, Tony Elumelu, Bisi Onasanya, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Akinsola Akinfemiwa and Adebola Adesola.
Others are Emeka Emuwa, Tunde Lemo, Nebolisa Arah, Peter Amangbo, Bisi Omoyeni, Tokunbo Abiru, Kehinde Durosimi-Etti, Fidelis Tilije, Alex Otti, Isa Yuguda, Philip Oduoza, Uzoma Dozie.
Atedo Peterside
Atedo Peterside, an investment banker, and economist is the founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc, Anap Business Jets Limited (Anap Jets), and the Atedo N. A. Peterside Foundation (Anap Foundation). At age 33, he founded the Investment Banking & Trust Company Limited (IBTC) in February 1989 and presided as the CEO till 2007. The new entity- IBTC Chartered Bank, on September 24, 2007, merged with Stanbic Bank Nigeria Ltd to become Stanbic IBTC with Peterside elected as Chairman. He announced his resignation on 21 March 2017.
He is currently the Chairman of Anap Jets Limited, which commenced business on January 1, 2015. He also sits on the boards of both The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited and Standard Bank Group Limited. He is also the Chairman of ART X Collective Limited and Endeavor High Impact Entrepreneurship Ltd/Gte, a non-profit organisation that provides mentorship and support to scale-up companies. Peterside also serves on the African Advisory Board of the Prince’s Trust International.
Pascal Dozie
Pascal Gabriel Dozie is the founder of Diamond Bank and the chairman of Pan-Atlantic University.
In 1971 after his return to Nigeria, from the United Kingdom, where he worked at the National Economic Development Office, he launched his first company -African Development Consulting Group (ADCG), which brought about Diamond Bank. In 1985, Dozie applied for a banking licence to help traders in South-Eastern Nigeria, who were faced with issues of banking. This brought about the birth of Diamond Bank. He was CEO of Diamond Bank from 1991 to 2006.
Dozie was also a one-time President of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. He currently owns shares in MTN Group and was Chairman of the company. He later resigned as the chairman and was succeeded by the former NCC boss, Ernest Ndukwe.
Fola Adeola
Fola Adeola became a Chartered Accountant in 1980 following his training with Deloitte, Haskins, and Sells, and D.O. Dafinone & Company (both Chartered Accountants).
In 1990, he (together with late Tayo Aderinokun) established Guaranty Trust Bank, which he served as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer from 1990 to July 2002.
He voluntarily retired from the bank in 2002, after 12 years, handing over to his deputy, Tayo Aderinokun. Since then, he has served as the chairman of UTC, ARM, Lotus Capital, Eterna Oil, CardinalStone Partners Limited, Tafsan Breweries (board member), and Credit Registry Services.
Today, Adeola is the chairman of Main One Cable Company Limited. He is also Chairman of the National Pension Commission. He chaired the Lagos State Disaster Relief Committee, which was set up following January 27, 2002, Lagos armoury explosion. He tried his luck in politics when he became the Vice-Presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) serving as running mate to former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission chairman (EFCC) Nuhu Ribadu in the 2011 presidential elections. He was a member of the Governing Council of Lagos State University and a council member of Olabisi Onabanjo University.
Jim Ovia
Jim Ovia was the founder and chief executive of Zenith Bank until 2010 when he became the chairman.
Ovia hates to be idle. This explains the increasing size of his business portfolio even while he is still holding forth as Chairman of Zenith Bank.
Ovia was the founder Visafone Communications Limited and the chairman of both the Nigerian Software Development Initiative (NSDI) and the National Information Technology Advisory Council (NITAC). He is a member of the Honourary International Investor Council as well as the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI). He is the Chairman of Cyberspace Network Limited.
He is a member of the Governing Council of Lagos State University, Lagos, and a member of the Board of Trustees, Redeemer’s University For Nations, Lagos. He was a member of the Governing Council of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (1999 – 2007) and served on the board of American International School, Lagos (2001 -2003).
Tony Elumelu
Tony Elumelu is an economist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of United Bank for Africa, Heirs Holdings, the Transcorp, and the founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation.
Elumelu started his career in Union Bank as a Youth Corp member in 1985. Twenty years later, he acquired Standard Trust Bank (in 2005), and United Bank for Africa (UBA) was acquired afterward.
Having retired from UBA along with few other bank CEOs in the wake of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s new tenure system for bank chiefs in 2010, Elumelu, who later returned to UBA as its group chairman, founded Heirs Holdings, which invests in the financial services, energy, real estate and hospitality, agribusiness, and healthcare sectors. In the same year, he established the Tony Elumelu Foundation, an Africa-based and African-funded philanthropic organisation.
Bisi Onasanya
Bisi Onasanya is a former Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of First Bank of Nigeria Limited. He was, before this appointment, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of First Pension Custodian, and he began his career with Arthur Young, an American audit firm.
Onasanya retired as Group Managing Director/CEO, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, on December 31, 2015. He is currently the Chairman/CEO of his real estate business, Address Homes Limited, a leading real estate company engaged in the acquisition, development, and management of luxurious contemporary homes across Nigeria. One of its first assignments is to manage some of the best locations and properties on Banana Island in Ikoyi, Lagos.
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi began his banking career when he was hired by Icon Limited (a subsidiary of Barings Bank and Morgan Guaranty Trust) as a merchant banker before later becoming head of financial services and manager of the office in Kano. He left the bank in 1991, when he travelled to Sudan, to pursue studies in Arabic and Islamic studies at the International University of Africa in Khartoum. In 1997, he returned to Nigeria and joined the United Bank for Africa.
In 2005, he joined the board of the First Bank Plc and in January 2009, he became the chief executive officer. He became the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2009, during the global financial crisis.
On 8 June 2014, Sanusi a grandson of former Emir Muhammadu Sanusi I, emerged as the new Emir of Kano. However, under a chain of controversial circumstances, he was dethroned by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje On 9 March 2020.
One day after his dethronement, Sanusi received two appointments from Governor Nasir El-Rufai in Kaduna State; he was appointed Vice Chairman of the Board of Kaduna Investment Promotion Agency and Chancellor of the Kaduna State University.
Akinsola Akinfemiwa
Renowned banker and former Managing Director of Skye Bank, Akinsola Akinfemiwa, is also the Chairman of Heritage Bank. He was one of the leading bank chiefs who successfully navigated their institutions through the energy-sapping consolidation programme of the CBN in 2005. He started with a bank called IMBE, then moved on to Chartered Bank. From Chartered Bank, he went on to become the CEO of Prudent Merchant Bank that became Prudent Bank and then became Skye Bank.
Though he quit the industry following the Central Bank of Nigeria’s guidelines in 2011, he returned in 2013 to become the chairman, Heritage Bank.
Akinfemiwa is the Chairman, AAG Management Resources Limited. He sits on the board of various other companies, including Genesis Electricity and Petroleum Products International Limited. He was also the Vice-Chairman of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Adebola Adesola
She is the Senior Vice-Chairman at Standard Chartered Bank Group where she was previously the CEO of Standard Chartered Bank for Nigeria and West Africa. In 1990, she started her practice as a banker with Citibank, Nigeria. There she served for nine years until 1999 when she moved to First Bank of Nigeria to become Managing Director in charge of corporate banking. However, she resigned five years later.
In 2010, she joined the Standard Chartered Bank Group, where she rose to become the chief executive in 2013.
Apart from her activities in the banking industry, she was Chairperson, United Nations Global Compact – Member, 2018, United Nations – Director, 2015, Nigeria National Competitiveness Council – Executive Member, 2013 Lagos Business School Alumni Association (LBSAA) – Vice President, Fate Foundation – and Board Member, Women in Business and Management (WIMBIZ), among numerous other engagements.
Emeka Emuwa
Mr. Emuwa previously occupied the position of Chairman for Union Homes Savings & Loans Plc, Country Officer at Citigroup, Inc. and Managing Director at Citibank Nigeria Ltd, (a subsidiary of Citigroup, Inc.), CEO, Group Managing Director & Director at Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, Chairman of Nigeria Portugal Friendship & Business Association and Chairman at Junior Achievement Nigeria.
Emeka Emuwa joined Union Bank after 25 years at Citibank, where he rose through the ranks from Management Associate in 1986 to Managing Director, Citibank Nigeria Ltd, and Citi Country Officer, Nigeria. He has been off the radar since his exit from Union Bank in March 2021.
Tunde Lemo
Lemo served as managing director of Wema Bank Plc, and in 2003, became the deputy governor of operations and director of the Central Bank of Nigeria. On January 2, 2004, Lemo became the director and chairman of the Abuja Securities & Commodity Exchange Plc. He was a non-executive director of Africa Finance Corporation since 16 May 2007.
On October 6, 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari approved his appointment as the new chairman of the Federal Emergency Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA). He effectively became a chairman of the agency in July 2018 joined by six new members of the board and a new managing director.
He is the chairman of Titan Bank and Flutterwave and sits on many other boards.
Nebolisa Arah
He joined the former International Merchant Bank (Nigeria) Ltd in 1981 as a credit analyst. Later, he was appointed the pioneer Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Fidelity Bank. He managed the Bank from 1988 to 2003.
He was five and a half years later picked for CBN’s rescue operation in Afribank, where he was appointed MD. And a few weeks after, he was in addition, appointed by the Federal Government as a member of the Governing Board of the CBN. He has since retired from those offices but has also got more and more appointments.
Bisi Omoyeni
Former Group Managing Director of Wema Bank, Bisi Omoyemi is a man of many parts.
The former bank MD, who was a deputy governor to Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, returned to Wema Bank as a chief executive and returned to politics after his exit from Wema. He contested the governorship seat in the 2018 elections on the platform of the Mega Party of Nigeria (MPN) but lost to Kayode Fayemi of the All Progressives Congress (APC). This year, he was in the news when he announced his return to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Peter Apamgbo
Peter Amangbo, who ran Zenith Bank as a Managing Director/Chief Executive between 2013 and 2019, started his career in 1989 as an auditor with PriceWaterhouse. He has garnered over two decades of banking experience spanning various departments of the bank.
He is now the Chairman, Board of Trustee of the fledgling bank, Globus Bank, which has since commenced full banking operations in Lagos with the plans of opening branches in other parts of the country to compete favourably with other banks in the visibly volatile banking industry.
Phillip Oduoza
With 30 years of banking experience in major financial institutions, Phillips Oduoza is the founder and chairman of the board of Nova Merchant Bank Limited. Before promoting Nova, he recently retired as the global CEO of UBA Group. He has served on the board of several companies, such as Diamond Bank Plc, Interswitch Plc, Value card Plc, Nigeria Interbank Settlement System, Nigeria Economic Summit Group, Financial Markets, and Dealers Quotations (FMDQ), and numerous others.
Alex Otti
Otti is an economist, banker, investor, philanthropist, and politician. He is the former Group Managing Director of Diamond Bank Plc. He began his banking career in 1989 with the Nigerian International Bank and worked with many other banks including UBA Group. In 2001, he joined First Bank Plc from where he moved to Diamond Bank as a Group Managing Director/Chief Executive until he voluntarily retired in 2014.
Otti was a gubernatorial candidate of Abia State on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). On 31 December 2015, the Court of Appeal which sat in Owerri removed Okezie Ikpeazu of the Peoples Democratic Party as governor of Abia State and declared Otti of APGA the winner of the April 11 and April 25 governorship elections in the state. However, on February 3, 2016, the Supreme Court reversed the verdict of the Court of Appeal and affirmed the election of Ikpeazu as Governor. In 2019, he again recontested and was successful. Otti is a member of the editorial board of THISDAY, and writes a fortnightly column, every other Monday, titled “Outside The Box”.
Fidelis Tilije
Fidelis Tilije was a former Managing director/Chief Executive of Fortunes International Bank Plc, one of the banks which lost their licences in 2006, following the CBN banking sector consolidation, midwifed by Prof Chukwuma Soludo.
Tilije, joined politics and was the running mate to Chief Great Ogboru in 2006, again in January 2011 and finally in April, 2011. He was later appointed Commissioner for Water Resources by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State
Tokunbo Abiru
Tokunbo worked for 10 years at Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB). He then proceeded to First Bank Nigeria, where he worked for 14 years. In 2011, he was appointed as Lagos State Commissioner for Finance but resigned in 2013, to take up an executive role in First Bank Nigeria Ltd. He served as a Non-Executive Director between 2013 to 2016 in different companies like Airtel Mobile Networks Limited, FBN Capital Limited (Now FBN Merchant Bank Limited), and FBN Bank Sierra Leone Limited.
In 2018, he became the founding Chief Executive of Polaris Bank. On August 24, 2020, Abiru resigned from Polaris Bank to contest the Lagos East Senatorial election on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC) which he won. Currently, he is a Senator of the Federal Republic.
Kehinde Durosimi-Etti
Durosinmi-Etti has over three decades of management and leadership experience as a chartered accountant and banker. After a stint in audit practice; he started his banking career in 1987 when he joined the Nigerian-American Merchant Bank Limited (an Affiliate of Bank of Boston). Out of the 27 years career span in banking and other financial services, 16 of these years were spent in top leadership positions as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of three different banks in Nigeria, Midas Bank in 1995, Eko International Bank in 2002, and Skye Bank in 2010 and each time leaving on his own volition. In 2014, Durosimi-Etti, with few others set up Variant Advisory Services. Although he has been very quiet, he rolled out a book, “Frontier Capital Markets and Investment Banking Principles and Practice from Nigeria,” which he co-authored with Temitope Oshikoya. He was recently appointed on the board of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund.
Isa Yuguda
He was Managing Director & Chief Executive of NAL Merchant Bank (1999 – June 2000). In June 2000, Yuguda was appointed Minister of State for Transport in the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo. He was moved to the Ministry of Aviation (May 2003 – June 2005). He was first elected Governor of Bauchi State in April 2007, on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). In April 2009, he changed allegiance from the ANPP to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Yaguda was re-elected governor on 28 April 2011.
Uzoma Dozie
Uzoma Dozie (born November 2, 1969) is a banker, tech investor, and financial inclusion advocate. He was the GMD and CEO of Diamond Bank from 2014 and successfully implemented a merger with Access Bank Plc in 2018. He is the CEO and Founder of Sparkle, a financial technology community and ecosystem. As an advocate of technology, Uzoma is passionate about connecting individuals and businesses with digital solutions to improve their financial business and lifestyle activities.
