Can Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede Urgently Succeed Wigwe At Access Holdings, Albeit Temporarily?
The Oasis Reporters
February 12, 2024
As painful as it seems, Access Corporation could be urgently thinking of who may fit in temporarily as Acting CEO of the African financial institution because a vacuum would serve no one any good.
This is the reason vice presidents urgently get sworn in to office in the case of the sudden unavailability of the president of any country.
As far as Access Corporation is concerned there seems to be a vacuum right at the moment as the beloved CEO Herbert Wigwe has passed on suddenly in a helicopter crash.
The radar may seem to beam on Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, the author of Leaving The Tarmac: Buying A Bank In Africa (Red Door, 2020).
The book is a memoir that recounts how he and Herbert Wigwe bought Access Bank in 2002, one of the smallest and most crisis-prone banks in Nigeria, and built it into one of the biggest and strongest banks in the country that is making waves on the African continent with it’s signature mergers and acquisitions that has inexorably assisted in expanding the Bank’s customer base, assets and profitability by using it’s unique culture of banking excellence that increases all the indices of growth..
According to Wikipedia and other online searches, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede FCIB, CON was born on 24 September, 1966). He is a Nigerian business mogul, banker, investor and philanthropist. He was the former group managing director (GMD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of Access Bank Plc.
He is also the founder and chairman of Coronation Group Limited and its affiliates, Coronation Asset Management Ltd and Trium Ltd.
He founded Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG) in 2014 and is also the co-chairman of the United Kingdom-Nigeria Capital Market Task Force and a board member of TCX Investment Management Company Netherlands.
In addition to that, he is also chairman, board of trustees of the Financial Market Dealers Association, and immediate past chairman of Coronation Insurance Plc (formerly Wapic).
Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede is also a past President of The Nigerian Stock Exchange (now Nigerian Exchange Group) where he took over from Aliko Dangote, the founding Chairman of the FMDQ OTC Exchange, Chairman of EnterpriseNGR and co-founder of Tengen Family Office.
Aigboje Aig-Imoukhude was born on September 24, 1966 in Ibadan, Oyo State
(Western Nigeria) to parents who were in the civil service. His father, Frank Aig-Imoukhuede and mother, Historian Emily Aig-Imoukhuede (née Ihonde) had 3 other children, Erekpitan, Oluwakemi and Aigbovbioise. He hails from Sabongida-Ora, Edo State in Southern Nigeria.
He lived with his family in Lagos but went to Federal College College, Kaduna in North West Nigeria. He earlier attended St. Saviour’s School (primary) in Lagos and at age 16, he enrolled to study law at University of Benin, Edo State, Nigeria. He graduated with a LLB degree in 1986 at age 19 and was called to the bar in 1987.
He holds a Triumph MBA, awarded jointly by the London School Economics, New York University, and HEC Paris. In 2000 he attended a three month Executive Management Programme course at Harvard Business School.
To truly appreciate why he may be a shoo-in as perhaps a temporary CEO at Access Holdings if he is interested and available, reading his book, Leaving The Tarmac is highly recommended.
The book says that when Nigerian bankers Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede and Herbert Wigwe led the acquisition of Access Bank in 2002, few could see the business logic of the move.
Yet the next decade would vindicate the duo.
Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede’s narrative describing the rise of Access Bank from a struggling, crisis-ridden bank in the nether regions of the Nigerian banking fraternity to become a top-five institution in the country is a remarkable one, according to a review of the book by
Aigboje and his friend, the late Herbert Wigwe had the robust dream of owning their own bank while they were colleagues at Guaranty Trust Bank ( a leading Tier-1 Nigerian bank).
Well, to put it succinctly, they lived their dream as Access Bank is a reality. They saw problems and created solutions. That was the template they worked on to build prosperity.
The board of Access Corporation might think of keeping everything in the house while maintaining the culture. For now, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede seems a perfect shoo-in, that is if he is readily available.
Greg Abolo
Wikipedia
Online Searches
Direct interviews
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