Former Group Managing Director of Wema Bank Plc Jeremiah Adebisi Omoyeni bowed out of office in 2006 after a stint in politics. In this encounter with Assistant Editor DADA ALADELOKUN, he reveals the driving force of his life, among other things.
Who is Adebisi Omoyeni? Not a few would gleefully say: “He is the former Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Wema Bank Plc.”
A mere five-minute encounter with him at his Ikoyi, Lagos office would convince any one that he is implacably entrenched in a “cult” under God’s supreme headship!
For the 47 minutes that his session with this reporter lasted, the soft-spoken banker interspersed his words with biblical quotes. “I now know the cult to which this man belongs,” the reporter said.
Fifty-five-year-old Omoyeni, an indigene of Ikere, an ancient Ekiti community, spent the 21 years of his career in Wema Bank after his National Youth Service in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). He was offered a job at NNPC which he turned down.
Why? This, reporter wanted to know before attempting to find out the template of his unalloyed rapport with God.
“My appointment letter came directly from its headquarters, and, importantly, I didn’t want to jump from one place to the other,” he said.
However, it was not easy turning down the offer. “In NNPC, I had a Rivers-born boss, Mr Andrews Jaja, who insisted I must work there,” he recalled, saying: “He was processing my application when I went to the Federal Polytechnic, Ibadan, to lecture. When I returned to Lagos to find out how far he had gone, he said he had been tying to reach me without success. He asked me not to go back to Ibadan; he called Hogg Robinson, who employed me without any interview. I didn’t spend three months there when Continental Loss Adjusters invited me to start its new company for my sound first degree in Insurance. After over a year there, I went to Wema Bank. And from 1987, when I joined, I was there until I left the industry in 2008.
“But quite many in your shoes would have jumped at the NNPC for bigger pay then …,” the reporter cut in. He confessed: “It was a great confusion. Truly, the temptation came because in those days, if you worked in NNPC, people knew you were already in money. It became confusion for me. I prayed over it and God took absolute control and sorted things out His own way. I joined Wema Bank as the Head, Insurance and Pensions Department. And it is a fact that you cannot occupy a leadership position unless you know what you are doing and you are doing it very well. Three months into joining the bank, they saw the traits in me and that was part of why I did not go to the NNPC.”
The banker, who said in the history of the bank, no human being has ever had the type of promotion he had, explained: “I had promotion each year for the first 13 years! I spent one year as Assistant General Manager (AGM) in a year and got double promotion to GMD within one year!”
He further recalled: “I was in Ekiti as deputy to former Governor Ayodele Fayose and when the bank had consolidation challenges, they came to beg me. They wrote letters; begged my governor to appeal to me. Eventually, I returned to recapitalise the bank within 18 days! If I did not go back, the bank would have been liquidated. But it was by God’s grace.”
Omoyeni recalled how he finally left the bank: “I left the bank because some people wanted to hijack it. They sought my connivance and I refused because I could not compromise my integrity. I fought them and I overcame. I was later asked to come back because my hands are clean. That is how an Ekiti person should be.”
Then, the reporter got curious about his upbringing. He went down memory lane: “I spent the whole of my youthful days in Ikere-Ekiti. I attended Holy Trinity Primary School. And I have always been doing well by God’s grace. From there, I went to St Benedict because my father believed you must attend a Modern School for you to be mature before going for higher education. I got into Amoye Grammar School in 1971 and left in 1975. I later became a teacher at Ise, a neighbouring town, because that time, the job you could easily get was teaching. I was at St Mary’s College, Owo, for one-year training.”
He later became a teacher at Ilawe-Ekiti in 1977. He gained admission into the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in 1979. “I spent one year as a student of Demography and Social Statistics. However, I always made ‘A’ in quantitative courses. Thus, I wanted to change to Accounting, either at Ife or the University of Lagos (UNILAG). I got to Unilag where I wanted to study accounting, but an uncle advised me to study Insurance, saying it is a life course, which was then the fashion, even abroad.”
“I heeded the advice, but nursed the ambition to change to Accounting after one year.As I was tried in my first year, a Federal government scholarship was announced. Then, I was my class’ best in Insurance & Actuarial Sciences. I got a merit award which would elude me if I changed my course. So, I stuck to Insurance.
“After completing my first degree with First Class honours, I returned to Unilag for Masters in International Law and Diplomacy and later, Masters in Banking and Finance, Executive Cadre; I also came out in flying colours. In 2005 and 2007, I bagged the Achievers Award and Distinguished Alumnus Award,” Omoyeni said.
Stating his father’s contribution to his life, he recalled: “My father – Chief Gabriel Omoyeni, the Baba Ijo of Holy Trinity – was a disciplinarian and a good Christian. He was kind-hearted. He was a Licensed Buying Agent (LBA) for cocoa. With my father, you couldn’t do anything wrong. He would always tell you that a good name is better than riches.”
His mother, Bosede, he said, would support anything my father said or did. “They always cooperated on any issue, especially as regards our upbringing,” he said.
“Then, how easy was it meeting your wife … and who is she?” This reporter cut in. He replied: “I met my wife, Owo-born Princess Mercy Ayoade (nee Olateru-Olagbegi), by divine grace. It was while doing vacation jobs together at the Ministry of Finance, Akure, Ondo State capital. It was after my first year in the university. She came from OSCAS, Ikare-Akoko, Ondo State, where she was doing her ‘A’ Levels course then. We met and somehow became attracted to each other; the rest is history (laughs). After OSCAS, she went to University of Ife too where she graduated in 1985. She bagged a Masters Degree from Unilag in 1989. She is currently in the Law School.”
