Former Managing Director of Skye Bank, Akinsola Akinfemiwa, is back in the banking industry as Chairman of Heritage Bank after a brief absence. But his most exciting experience now appears to be his new portfolio as Vice Chairman of government-owned Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). He sees the appointment as an opportunity to contribute to a history-making venture. In this interview with SEGUN AJIBOYE, he talks about his family life and his life as a banker. Excerpts:
Some people have described you as a banking whiz-kid. Do you agree with this?
When people talk about whiz-kid, it is not about being brilliant. It is about leadership. You train people, groom them and they start to depend on you. You lay out what the values are, train people to be able to take decisions. We always have our own whiz-kids in our lives. These are people that we rely on; people that we believe can come with the solutions. They are people who over time we depend on to come up with the answers. To me, that is whiz-kid.
How challenging was your tenure as MD/CEO?
I know that I did my best when I was in that industry. As a practitioner, you go in there and give your best. Yes, the last few years of my banking experience were very challenging, but they were also very exciting. You pushed in all directions and put in all your energy because it was new. We put together five banks with the consolidation exercise. You define the tactics that you want to adopt, and people follow you. Sometimes, these people don’t even know why they are following you. The reason they follow you is because they believe in you. As the leader, you are the enable.
It is not often that you get one person to head two different banks at different times. How did you achieve this?
If you look at it from the perspective of a profession, then you’ll know that because you have built sets of skills in your career, when people need those skills, they go out to look for you. That is the way it has happened all my life. I’m doing a particular job and something new comes up, and the owners of that business are looking for a CEO that can do the job, and they call you up and give it to you because they know that you can do the job.
I am a professional manager. Even as Chairman of Heritage Bank, it is the same thing. I joke with people that though I have retired from banking, I am now playing the role of a coach like you have in football. I am no longer the CEO or playing a management role. I now play the role of a teacher, telling them which way to go and sharing my experiences in banking with the board.
Where do you get the energy to do all these?
Like I said, it is a different ball game. I believe you are looking at it from the point of an every day job. As chairman of the board, the people are more interested in the value you bring into the board. You could even work, expressing your views to them via a mail or telephone. It can also be that they want you to open a path somewhere for them. Even for you as a person, you are also working, building experiences because you are also learning from the people you meet on the board. There are new things that you are learning from your colleagues on the board.
As MD/CEO, you oversaw the consolidation of Skye Bank. How challenging was it?
For me, it was what they call joyful stress. It was challenging, but because you felt you were doing something great, you were happy doing it. You didn’t even notice the pressure. The drive is there for you to continue to work and enjoy it. I think this is in all professions, especially if you feel you are achieving results, you feel you are pushing or providing solutions. That was the way I felt.
It was very tough, and it was happening for the very first time in my life, bringing people together from different backgrounds, different organisations. It was very tough, but you also thank God that He saw you through. That is the way I would put it. It was some experience because we have heard of two companies coming together, but when you have five companies coming together, and the most difficult aspect is managing the people. You can control the rest of the elements; they listen to you and go the way you want. But when you have people, they come with their biases and mindsets. And there is nothing you do or say that can make them change. And you realise that these are adults, some of whom are older than you. They are biased not because they hate you, but because they see things differently. So the ability to put these people together, to do what they say they won’t do and still enjoy doing it is the challenge.
What’s your impression of the banking industry in Nigeria?
We have made a lot of progress. The industry has done quite well. The regulators have done quite well. Frankly, I look at it from the point of view of when I was there. If they hadn’t done what they did, you’ll begin to wonder where we would have been today. But banking industry worldwide, you see this challenge coming every 10 years. Things have been done in Nigeria to make sure that the banks are stronger. And those managing are a bit more careful, while the regulators have learnt more lessons in the last few years. But there are still more to do in the area of training, capacity building and to ensure that what have been achieved is sustained. By and large, I think what we have today is fairly better and stronger than what we had a few years ago.
And what would you say about the Nigerian economy?
That’s a tough one. If you go by the reports that we read, we should be doing very well. Seven per cent, eight per cent GDP and all, they all sound very good. Countries that have recorded these GDPs are doing very well. And if you record this for 10 years, you become China and other emerging big economies of the world. But when you look at what you have on ground, then you begin to think maybe we need to be careful with statistics. The economy has huge potential. The young people are very vibrant and energetic. So what is important is what we do with these people. We need to train them, equip them so that they can contribute to the economy.
There is also the issue of governance. People have said there is a correlation between governance and progress. If you have a high rate of corruption in a nation, the economy will be weak. But if you have transparent and low level of corruption like we have in some parts of the world, then you would see that they do well and progress. So we need to deal with that and begin to measure how our economy is doing.
I also believe in education. They say labour is cheap in Nigeria, but when you buy a cheap labour and you get a bad result and you end up doing same job two, three times, then you’ll realise that labour is not cheap in Nigeria and many of the African countries because the quality of job is so poor that we end up depending on other countries of the world. And as long as we continue to do this, it means that employment and production will continue to happen out there and not here. We would then continue to have a huge number of unemployable people.
For example, if you train as a doctor or nurse in Nigeria, you’ll find that there are some parts of the world that you cannot practise. And this is in almost every profession. So we need to know that education is very critical. We need to begin to train our people. We cannot continue to depend on this consumption economy whereby all we do is to produce oil, sell it, bring back the money and spend. We need to build our own capacity for people to produce and consume what we produce. I think the economy has huge potential, but I think we are so far away from where we should be. And when we compare ourselves with countries like Malaysia, Singapore and others, then we should ask ourselves where we are in all of this.
As a country, I don’t think we can say our economy is doing so well until we are in control of all these things. How can we say our country is doing well when power is at less than 4000 megawatts? And the country that we compete with in Africa, South Africa, is at well over 40,000 megawatts. For me, we would not be sincere to say that we are happy with what we have. Sometimes I have the nightmare that what happens if the oil of this nation dries up one day? What happens to us, if something happens and the oil dries up?
You are the Vice Chairman of the Transmission Company of Nigeria. What is this new experience like for you?
I think the power thing is more important than the bank thing. About 10 years ago, I went for a programme, where you tried to plan how your future would be, and one of the things I wanted to do after the corporate world was try and see what it is like in government business. Now I have this opportunity as the Vice Chairman of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). It is the government business in the power value line. The other two have been privatised. You have the TCN in-between the power generation and distribution companies. So, what is left of what used to be PHCN is the TCN.
That is what I am saying about the job being very exciting, to see how this would work out. People have said that the TCN is the weak link in the power line, but I believe that if TCN is given the necessary support by the owners, which is the government, I mean in the same way the other two companies would get from their owners, there is no reason why the company should fail. I have seen it. The people on the board are professionals.
My view is that I have seen it work in the last one year, and we would be achieving results very soon. I am learning a lot about how government works. But to move from 2000 megawatts, the generation company must be ready to pump in resources to generate. The TCN must be willing to transport whatever is generated to the distribution company. I have realised today that sometimes, if we have blackout, it may not be coming from transmission. It may be from generation or distribution. For instance, there could be a gas problem or the water level is low. I think with the support from government, which has been promised, and also with some new ideas, we could begin to outsource some of the lines. You could build a transmission line, like we have with the toll roads, so that we can call for more investment. We can begin to look for creative ways to increase capacity in that sector.
So if you ask me what I’m doing here, I would tell you that it is exciting for me to learn more about what I think would be profound for the nation, to look for solutions to our power challenges. I also think the power sector privatization has gone very well in spite of what some people may want to believe. I hope those who have acquired these plants would put all their efforts to make them work, modernise the plants and to get the needed human resources to manage them. Being part of this power thing really excites me.
Would I be right to say it is a challenge for you?
Yes, it is. But I am enjoying it basically because is providing a solution to a problem.
You have a foundation, the Araba Foundation. What do you hope to achieve with this?
A step each by every one of us would bring about a huge change to our nation. If, for instance, there is the need for us to clean this nation, and I decide that my immediate environment must be clean. If everybody begins to do same, the whole country would be clean.
We can continue to condemn government till eternity, but who is the government? We complain, but fail to do anything about our own immediate environment. If you play your part and I play mine, then things will change for us. We complain about Nigeria too much. It took a group of people to say we need a change. I know a lot of state governors who marvel at what is happening in Lagos. Remember the type of taxis that we had in Lagos. But the government went out to negotiate with banks and other organisations to make a change. And the truth is that things are working in Lagos.
Let us go a bit personal. What was growing up like for you?
I was a son of a civil servant. I had an average growing up. I went to school when everybody my age went to school. There was nothing unusual.
You mean nothing like a privileged background?
Like I said, my father was a civil servant, middle-level civil servant, and we had the privilege of going to school. I went to secondary school and after that went to the university.
You studied Agricultural Economics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Was this deliberate or was the course chosen for you?
I was 16 when we were taking this decision, so it wasn’t really about ‘I want to be this or I want to be that’. The fact was that one of my seniors in school had gone to the University of Nigeria. He is a professor now. A lot of my mates were doing Medicine and Pharmacy at the time. And for some reasons, I wanted to be different. I actually wanted to study Economics, but I didn’t get it.
Another thing was the idea of travelling to the east of the country, the River Niger and all that. All these were too exciting for me. I wanted the adventure, wanting to see the stories that we had been told by the senior. And my father did not like the idea of going abroad to study. He seized all the forms that we tried to use for admission into schools abroad
What reason did he give for this?
I think it had to do with personal experience. Some of his friends who went there to study didn’t come back, and those who came back didn’t do too well. Maybe one or two personal experiences, but he was dead against travelling abroad.
Who would you say has had the most profound impact on your life and career?
It was my father. He was my very good friend. He was the one that built me up. It was his combination with my uncle, his brother. They both did a whole lot of work on me. Like my father, my uncle directed everywhere that we should go. My uncle, whom I lived with during the earlier part of my life, was a civil servant. I think his position at the time would be the equivalent of the chief accountant of the nation today. And my father was always there for philosophy, for explanation of things about life. He was wise. He had a world view about things. He made me realise early that if you have a good education, then you have the key to success. So my uncle and my father were the two people who took turns to groom me.
Was meeting your wife the usual love at first sight as some would claim?
My wife was my friend before we started to date. We lived in the same neighbourhood. Her brother was also my friend and colleague. We did things together, read books together, argued together and one thing led to the other.
So how has it been?
Almost 30 years with four kids, it has been wonderful. She takes care of things.
Any special secret?
I think it’s your own style. Remember that we talked about inter-personal skill. My thing is that you first have to make up your mind that you want to make the union work. I tell people that marriage is like any other contract. You play your part, I play mine. That is the only way to make the contract work. And that is why we go to court to sign agreement. But the problem is that people want to go outside of that agreement to do things. People must be patient with each other because they come from different backgrounds.
Another thing I found out in marriages with challenges is that people want the other person to be like them. We try to force the other person to be us, and we fail in doing this. But generally, I think men don’t listen to their wives because they see themselves as men. But I think men should listen more to their wives. On the other hand, women want to convert their men to whom they feel he should be. I would advise the women to relax. The two should know that they are both different, so there would be different opinions. They should just try to find a common ground for their opinions.
I am professional. I dress to meet my professional needs. Yes I may read the fashion books, but I don’t go out of my way to dress. I know what is decent, and what I should wear or should not wear. But I would not describe myself as a fashion icon.
How do you relax?
Like I said, I love music. I love to be with people, to party. And of course, I love to watch movies and to go out with my friends and family. Somebody once described me as Liverpool FC because I am always in company with my friends and family.
