PHILLIP ISAKPA

London, UK

When Access Holdings Plc (ACCESSCORP) announced in March the return of the banker and investor Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede to active service in the boardroom of the now broader international financial institution, as its new chairman, just a little over 10 years after he exited as group managing director and CEO of Access Bank Plc (a part of the larger institution he now chairs), there was a huge buzz across the world of finance and banking, especially among those who are familiar with the journey of the bank and his role and place in that journey. Perhaps, also,  a huge sigh of relief for shareholders who had been worried after the tragic untimely departure of Herbert Wigwe, Access Holdings’ group managing director and CEO, who, with Aig-Imoukhuede, were co-owners of the revolutionary growth and transformation spirit that set the bank off on its current trajectory.

His return to lead the board of Access Holdings has been interpreted in many ways – “A safe pair of hands return”; “A former insider back to guide”, among others. But then you would agree that the most appropriate interpretation would be one that points to “keeping the original vision alive” because it must be a thing of fortune for one half of the pair of the original drivers of Access Bank’s growth and successes to return to steady and further grow the institution. That is supported by this statement he once made to me in an interview, hitting on the visioning spirit:

“I didn’t want to be just the manager or the CEO of a well established bank that was doing well. I wanted to have on my track record or my CV the establishment or the creation of a world class institution. So we crafted the vision of, basically, a world class financial institution run by Nigerians, owned by Nigerians, as well as any other investors who found the story compelling.”

For a little over 10 years, Aig-Imoukhuede concentrated on other pursuits, including a lot of work in philanthropy through his Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, co-founded with his wife, Ofovwe, which then birthed African Initiative for Governance (AIG) and Aig-Imoukhuede Institute, through which his burning desire to enthrone global best practices in governance in public sector institutions in Nigeria and Africa is being pursued; and also his public healthcare interest that is being delivered through ABCHealth, a coalition of African corporates, businesses and philanthropists that he co-founded with Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote. Although he retired from Access Bank, he remained steadfast to the world of finance and investment, establishing the firm footings of his Coronation Group and Tengen Family Office (Tengen Holdings). His ecosystem of investments encompasses banking and finance, insurance, technology, industrial and oil and gas sectors. And it is understood that as a major shareholder he was in the engine room during Access Bank’s merger and acquisition strategy briefings, transaction and deal closing discussions with Diamond Bank.

So, why are we here with this focus on the man? Well, in Nairobi last week, the African Banker magazine, at its 18th edition of its prestigious  the “African Banker Awards Gala Ceremony 2024”, bestowed its “Lifetime Achievement” award on Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, for his lifelong dedication to the banking industry, spanning three decades. This award presents us with an opportunity for some retrospection, especially for a financial journalist like me who has been involved as an independent observer and chronicler of a good part of this period. Hence my entry point, which follows next.

At the 2012 annual general meeting of Access Bank Plc, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede informed shareholders that he would be leaving the bank in December 2013. As a topline editor in Nigeria’s still-to-be-structured world of business journalism, my information seeking nose and ever burning hunger to get top business leaders ‘on the record’, got itchy. This itchiness and hunger immediately told me that, for all that he had done with Access Bank, leading it since 2002 when he and his partner, Herbert Wigwe, audaciously marshalled a take-over of the then struggling bank, which was playing at the bottom of the league table of Nigerian banking, Businessday, which I was editing at the time, HAD TO get him to sit down for an interview with us. I had been Europe Correspondent for Businessday based in the UK for nearly seven years before being persuaded to come back to Nigeria to edit the publication, so it was quite easy to see why I knew we needed to get him for an interview before he left office.

Pulling contacts within the bank, especially the bank’s very helpful PR and media relations strategist at the time, Segun Fafore, we got a date and I assembled my top men in finance and economics analysis, for the task that led to the well received interview published in 2013 as AIGBOJE AIG-IMOUKHUEDE: THE DEFINITIVE INTERVIEW.

At the time of taking this decision, Aig-Imoukhuede had been, for me, unarguably, the topnotch revolutionary force of the Nigerian banking landscape, with a Midas touch for transformation. The banking environment had already experienced the monumental transition brought about by Jim Ovia with Zenith Bank, Fola Adeola and the late Tayo Aderinokun with Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), Pascal Dozie with Diamond Bank (which was later bought by Access Bank through merger and acquisition), and a couple of others, which brought the phrase ‘new generation’ into Nigeria’s banking lexicon and created a perception dichotomy in the way banks in the country were seen. For the electronic banking revolution that the new generation banks brought, the four old musketeers of banking in Nigeria, which were then either majority or solely government owned – First Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA), Union Bank, and Afribank (which later became Mainstreet Bank after the former failed in 2011) – became conveniently ‘old generation’ to all bank customers in the country.

Aig-Imoukhuede’s place or role in the global business landscape generally sits within the realm of transformation. It is a revolutionary process where transformation is built around a view that is futuristic; in the sense that it allows him to see ahead of time, and you can call it ‘The Long View’ way of thinking where visioning is divinely honoured. He therefore engages and builds with this notion in mind, and it allows him to be non-stationary, non-localised in the trajectory of his endeavours. It also makes it possible to have an expansive global mindset where glocalisation as a strategy enables the development and growth of the institutions he gets involved in to build and grow through a global visioning process.

Here’s how he captures the outcome of the transformative spirit that propelled what Access Bank had become just before he left office as CEO:

“I was at one of these fora [some years ago] where I was being asked [questions] by finance and equity analysts and investors … and they spoke about this remarkable transformation story from a second tier bank to a first tier bank; and I told them that I needed to correct that, that it’s not from second tier to a first tier. It’s actually from a position of fourth tier really, because we were around between the 70th and [the] 90th bank in the ranking of the industry that had 90 participants in 2002 before we came in … But irrespective of what the industry size was, we wanted to rank in the top five.”

Indeed, the transformation Aig-Imoukhuede talks about here is clearer when you see how the numbers went from mostly negative in 2002 to what they became by the time he left in 2013. For instance, the bank was catapulted to one of Nigeria’s top five banks in line with the vision he alludes to in the quote above; its customer base grew from just 10,000 in 2002 to 6.5 million in 2013, while it had presence in nine other African countries and the United Kingdom; boasting a staff strength of more than 5,000 employees and an asset base of $12 billion. It achieved numerous milestones and became a recognisable name globally. In that same year of his exit from Access Bank, he won the ‘African Banker of the Year’ Award. So, this year’s Lifetime Achievement award represents a seal of welcome back to the banking grid for the astute banker and investor.

There is another thing that can be said about Aig-Imoukhuede. He has quite a colossal and deep involvement in the wider spectrum of the Nigerian financial system, working in the engineering and reengineering of different aspects of the financial markets. This is demonstrated by the fact that he is a past president of The Nigerian Stock Exchange (now The Nigerian Exchange Group, after its demutualisation); founding chairman of the FMDQ OTC Exchange, now a wave making financial institution in the country; and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Financial Market Dealers Association.

In bestowing the Lifetime Achievement Award on Aig-Imoukhuede, Omar Ben Yedder, group publisher and managing director, African Banker, said:

“We would like to honour your remarkable career achievements as a leader in Africa. Today, Access Bank stands as a behemoth in African banking. As brilliantly described in your book, “Leaving the Tarmac” Access Bank started its life as a third-tier bank, but your visionary leadership, as well as that of the late Herbert Wigwe, transformed it into an institution that commands immense respect and admiration.”

It is, indeed, a testament to his three decades’ journey of dedication to transforming the African banking and financial landscape, which have formed an illustrious career that has been marked by exceptional leadership and transformative accomplishments.

In accepting the award, Aig-Imoukhuede said: “This award honours the collective efforts of over ten thousand talented individuals, mostly Africans whom I have had the privilege to work with throughout my journey. As professionals, recognition spurs us to strive for greater levels of excellence. I am deeply humbled and motivated to continue contributing to Africa’s growth and development.”

The trained lawyer with an LLB from the University of Benin and a BL from the Nigerian Law School, as well as an executive MBA awarded jointly by the London School of Economics, NYU Stern Business School and HEC Paris, by his comment, accepts the ‘welcome back’ to the governance and visioning role he will now play in this his present dispensation as chairman of Access Holdings PLC.