(Press Clips)
There have been books written on boardroom leadership and corporate governance but they can never be enough as new challenges keep cropping up in the society and as these happen, new lessons are learnt and new solutions are provided. That is the essence of this new book 50 NIGERIA’S BOARDROOM LEADERS—LESSONS ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND STRATEGY By Mike Awoyinfa, Dimgba Igwe and Jibril Musa. Prior to the global economic meltdown in 2008/9, the role of governance was not placed on the front burner. With that market crash, governance and regulatory activities assumed a more serious dimension in boardroom discourse. The long-term survival and value addition of an organisation have a lot to with the quality of the board and effectiveness of corporate governance. The board is the soul of a business. The boardroom is a very serious place where major decisions are taken.
MY UBA YEARS
Being that I graduated with a first class degree in economics, I was a strong candidate for the banking industry. After graduation, I served with Citibank Nigeria and thereafter, I was retained marking the beginning of a career in banking. I spent over 25 years in the industry and believe that my contributions are properly documented for posterity.
I joined UBA towards the end of 1996 as a Principal Manager and Head of Oil and Gas in the present South-South and South East regions of the country, operating from Port Harcourt. I was subsequently to oversee the Corporate Bank business and reported to the Executive Director in charge of Corporate Banking in the Head Office. The major achievement of my team was the consolidation of the hold of the bank in oil and gas businesses. We easily became the bank to beat in the Upstream, Downstream and Oil Service sub-sectors of the economy. We had most of the major names and managed them in a very efficient manner that they literally moved all their businesses to UBA. I guess that was the major reason First Bank headhunted a few of my colleagues and I. First Bank businesses then were at great risk. Coming to First Bank helped the bank to contain the slide and then grow the business in that sector and beyond.
FROM UBA TO FIRST BANK
First Bank was an exciting experience. My contact with the boardroom started long before I made it to the board as Executive Director. In the bank at that time, once you became a group head of a market facing part of the bank, you would attend board committee and full board meetings to defend your papers. I guess that helped prepare me for the boardroom. Again, in First Bank, an Executive Director did not just face the board, he was part of the board and was involved in taking decisions and also implementing those decisions even if they specifically had nothing to do with the directorate. As an Executive Director, you owned the business of your directorate and were subtly in competition with other Executive Directors in delivering the numbers for the bank. There were so many interesting moments. One of them was the battle to save my directorate from extinction. I had just been appointed Executive Director in charge of Commercial Banking Directorate in September 2005. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now Emir of Kano, was appointed the same day from UBA to head Risk Management. Sanusi and I had worked together previously in UBA, so we were not new to each other. One day, Sanusi started a campaign about scrapping Commercial Banking because of what he termed, high loss norms associated with Commercial Banking businesses. That was the beginning of a very long battle that eventually ended up with a restructuring that scrapped Commercial Banking and had me re-designated Executive Director, South. It was, however, a battle that lasted very long and left little or no bruises.
BOARDROOM LEADERS I CANNOT FORGET
I shall just pick four of them. Mr. Hakeem Belo Osagie at UBA, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab and Dr. Oba Otudeko at FBN and Igwe Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe at Diamond. They were very competent in their own rights. Osagie was very brilliant and had a lot of contacts. He was, however, too involved in the day-to-day management of the bank and this was a major flaw that eventually affected the bank negatively, more so, when he was not a banker by training. Mutallab was a banker and had been CEO of UBA before his role in FBN. He was a proper non-executive chairman. He seemed to defer so much to Otudeko who had a large stake in the bank. There was therefore a perception of the latter hijacking the powers of the former. But he was also very competent. Otudeko took over from Mutallab when the latter retired. Because he had a large stake in the bank, there was expectation that he would do all to protect his interests, and in doing so, other stakeholders’ interests would be protected. In my assessment, he did that very convincingly because he had an eye for value and was a true businessman. The bank grew exponentially when he was there. The major drawback was that he was in conflict, being one of the biggest customers of the bank. I do not think he managed that one very well as his appetite for credit facilities put a lot of pressure on the bank in terms of maintaining regulatory lending limits and director’s exposures. He was also a contractor to the bank, another area of conflict of interest. Achebe was a thoroughbred professional, having retired from Shell as a Director after several decades in the company. He was not a major shareholder in the bank and was appointed on merit. His style was participatory. He was extremely patient and ensured that board decisions were only made after thorough debates. That sometimes, elongated board meetings but gave everyone true sense of belonging.
The major qualities that a chairman requires to lead a board would include patience, tolerance, information leadership, tact listening and decision-making skills. I will not refer to anyone as my “boardroom hero” but I have a lot of respect for Igwe Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe. He was excellent in the way he handled board and other matters when I worked with him in Diamond Bank. (For more, get your copy of the bestseller, 50 NIGERIA’S BOARDROOM LEADERS. Enquiries: mikeawoyinfa@gmail.com, 08033445125)
