I once told my Lagos Business School (LBS) DBA 2 students that working with and learning from Herbert Wigwe was several bootcamp intensive DBA programs and more.
The man was truly fearless. Knew exactly where he was headed, was in a hurry to get there and was full of mirth and good cheer as he bulldozed his way through.
I remember walking into his office on his 40th birthday to wish him well and his response was “Jekwu, my problem with turning 40 is that nobody can call me a whiz kid anymore!”
He was already the Group Deputy Managing Director of Access Bank Plc at the time, was my Group Head and Executive Director Institutional Banking Group (IBG) Guaranty Trust Bank Plc at 33, and between him and his corporate twin brother Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, had taken the audacious step not just to acquire Access Bank Plc, but also convince a number of us to jump ship from GT Bank and join them, take a pay cut while at it, with a pledge that there will be a salary review once the ship is stabilized.
I have told the story of how I joined Access Bank before. Dr. Okey Nwuke (who left GT Bank with Herbert and Aigboje) held discussions with Sanmi Shobowale and I at Startdust Suites in Port Harcourt. Hanging in the wings (actually in another corner of the hotel's restaurant), after engaging me in a similar discussion, was Muhtar Bakare who had then just left Citi Bank to join another team of young entrepreneurs to set up Trust Bank Nigeria Limited (which eventually merged into Sterling Bank). Muhtar did a pretty, in fact damned good job of selling his team’s vision to me. Okey didn’t need to sell anything. All he told me was something like, ‘I don’t need to talk too much, you know Herbert, you know me, you know Aigboje, we have all discussed, so when are you starting?’
There was no talk of remuneration, no talk of responsibility, there was only this heady feeling of intraprenuership, the desire to go where I felt I will make an enduring mark, leave a legacy. This was further sold when they shared the 7-point transformation agenda for the bank…and the vision “To Transform Our Bank into a World Class Financial Services Provider”. The Mission….”To Go Beyond the Ordinary, To Deliver The Perceived Impossible, in the Quest for Excellence”.
Adrenalin pumping, mind blowing stuff for a young man who was looking to make a mark. These guys could sell ice to an Eskimo.
Herbert was a very brilliant mind, with an infinite capacity to execute to the letter. Perpetually full of so much positive energy, always in search of the next frontier, a new horizon, that it was impossible to ever associate him with lethargy or inertia.
A human dynamo, you needed to know him to fully understand this.
No excuses. He could never accept that a failure was the end and very recently told me that he can never be part of a failed project.
Discussing the tragic incident that claimed his life and others, my erstwhile colleague, Ada Boniface and I agreed that if there was one person who would have thought of and done every single thing possible to structure and get himself out of that crash alive, it was Herbert Wigwe.
You get the point I’m trying to make?
Yes, for those who knew him, Herbert was the man who punctuates his sentences with "You get the point I'm trying to make!"
For who, between him and his brother Aigboje, "ehe! you understand what I mean" is a void filler that can cover deep ideas or issues ranging from a full financial model, to a transaction dynamic idiosyncrasy, or a historical context which you as a trained mentee / follower / Executive should by rote "understand what I mean".
Who emphasizes his points with a plosive "Correct!", "Absolutely!" or "Basically!".
And for who when he is trying to push a point, starts sentences with an emphatic "Alright!" or indicates the importance of a message with either of the double-barrelled "Extremely, Extremely, Important!", or "Truly, Truly!"
To fill out his perpetually morphing ideas will leave you to expand them with "Etcetera etcetera", or just a fluid "and all of that!"
You get the point I am trying to make?
Those that are close to him know that his "don't be annoyed!" is not because he thinks you are angry.
A man dedicated to family.
Going with him on his rounds to visit his Uncle or see his parents.
Leaving a meeting and riding in the car with him, listening to him going over one of his children's schoolwork, or helping them prep for an important exam. "Chizzy, I hope you had a good night's rest. Remember our revision yesterday? No need to study today. You can go for a run to refresh and you are ready for the exam. I trust you" or words to that effect.
Not once! Not twice!
He drove his children and set extremely high expectations for all of them, and I mean both his biological children and those of us his mentees.
Looking back today, the kind of responsibilities that Herbert and Aigboje gave some of us at an early age and stage of our careers largely accounts for where we are and who we are today.
In 2003, he insisted that I started attending Access Bank’s “Manager’s Meeting” (a Management Meeting that was meant exclusively for Management) as a Senior Banking Officer, at least 2 levels before I was due to be part of these meetings. At the time, the meeting comprised of approximately 18% of all professional staff (53 individuals as against a professional staff strength of approximately 300). A few of the attendees were not ‘Manager’s and Above’ but were invited to the meeting because of our functional roles.
There was always one new audacious corporate action that the team was meant to deliver on, always one more daring hill to climb.
Rallying the troops, Herbert would be like "Guys! This is not the time to relent! We have to finish strong! This is the final push to completely takeout GT bank (or insert the name of the bank currently topping the performance league table at that time). I know their people very well! They are not better than you! Once we finish this eh! Next year we can all rest and enjoy the fruits of our labour".
Of course, in that adrenaline driven, turbo charged, high octane environment, other than your remuneration (or maybe a promotion), the only reward for meeting your current financial year's budget is probably an increase in your budget for next financial year.
But then the driven troops will still rally to the war cry of “Access Warriors!!!” with the refrain “Ahu! Ahuuu! Ahuuu!!!”
After "the perceived impossible" is delivered in record time nko? Does he stop? Mbanu!
Rinse and repeat…
"Guys! This is not the time to relent! We have to finish strong! This is the final push to completely takeout Zenith bank (or insert the name of the bank currently topping the performance league table at that time)”….
Right before our eyes. Corporate action after corporate action, we watched the bank grow and expand exponentially.
For those who knew him, most must have sensed that the bank was not the final frontier, so his transitioning from a bank entrepreneur to a global /general entrepreneur was unsurprising.
Herbert had a large heart. His philanthropy both as an individual (for which he eventually set up the HOW Foundation) and as a leader of organizations require a standalone epitaph.
With time, my personal relationship with Herbert became more complicated given personal developments in my life at a point in time. I observed an otherness and an ideologically split, which is not unexpected given effluxion of time and the 16 years I spent with the bank and 20 years I spent working directly with him. So, in 2018 the bank and I agreed that there was no better time than then for me to move on to a different challenge and deploy the valuable career experience I had gained elsewhere.
I had personally committed that that second phase of my professional career would be spent on endeavours that created social and developmental impact with direct benefit to society. So, when a friend convinced me to respond to an advertisement seeking a CEO to set up a Trust Fund in the Health Sector, I applied, attended the first panel interview, and guess who I was told was the Chairman of this new entity?
Herbert!
After scaling though the panel interview, I attended the final interview with the then Board Co-Chairs of the HIV Trust Fund of Nigeria, Herbert and TotalEnergies E&P’s CEO Mike Sangster.
I got the job. About a year later the CEO of the related Nigerian Business Coalition Against AIDS (NIBUCAA) resigned and NIBUCAA’s board appointed me its CEO as well.
Guess who was the Chairman of NIBCUAA’s Board?
Herbert!
Essentially, in moving away from working with Herbert, I moved right back and got further entwined in working with him.
Cumulatively, of my 25 years of cognate experience in the corporate world, only in a 2-year interregnum (December 2018 to November 2020) did I not work directly with Herbert.
I recall my LBS DBA students asking me if I intended to dump the Lagos Business School and take up a part time lecturing role at the upcoming Wigwe University. My lighthearted response was that I did not think so because I could not understand how for my entire professional career, the more I tried to chart my course and move away from Herbert, the more his tentacles seem to draw me in, whatever direction I turned.
Haba! Obi will not always be a boy na! One day he has to be a man.
In all of this, not once did he ever stop pushing me, even when we were obviously in disagreement or when I felt he had boxed himself in with an obsequious Amen Corner that insulated him from happenings within his space.
First, as his younger brother / mentee / staff, seconded to work with one of the bank’s offshore stakeholders, 2007 to 2009 serving in the strategically important role of Group Head Global Financial Markets (in charge of debt and equity capital markets, project finance, specialized finance, multilateral lending etc). Then as CEO in Access Zambia, Deputy CEO in Access Bank Rwanda, CEO at HIV Trust Fund and CEO at NIBUCAA. So, you can imagine my pleasure when his response to a Whatsapp message I sent to him recently was “Thx a lot my brother”.
Omo! Boys have finally transitioned to men!😃
I recall an Access Bank management retreat we held in 2005. Anchored by Vic Lawrence and Associates (VLA), it took place somewhere at NICON Town Lagos. Management staff were divided into two groups led by Herbert and Aig.
I participated in the session led by Herbert and for one of the activities, the VLA consultants asked each of us to describe each member of the team in one sentence.
When it fell on Herbert to describe me, he wrote “He gets things done!” verbalized it and dropped the slip of paper and his pen on the table emphatically.
"Simple! Jekwu gets things done. Give him an assignment and he gets it done!"
What an endorsement! Coming from your mentor and GDMD, you can imagine what it did for a young man's confidence.
But if you ask me, that aphorism is a more apt description of Herbert than myself.
Herbert always gets things done!!
A man with his faults (we all have ours) but an exceptionally great leader, who wore his emotions on his sleeves. I look back today and acknowledge that the fact that I always saw Herbert as my elder/senior brother may have affected our relationship because when he grew his enterprises into the leviathan that they have become today, when he transmogrified into the corporate juggernaut, this behemoth of an institution, I still saw my witty, brilliant elder bros and mentor, the guy who some of us literally modelled ourselves and careers after, unwittingly even picking up his dress sense / style and mannerisms, thus ferociously protective of people who we considered interlopers.
Alu melu!
This death is an aberration!
I have always known the igbo expression, a great tree has fallen, an Iroko, but this is the first time I fully understand it.
An Orji, oke-osisi, a great tree has truly fallen. Night has enveloped us at noon.
Ironically, in our younger days when we would often hangout late at night with our big brothers, some people may be itching to go, Herbert will take a look at his wristwatch and quote one of my sayings with that his full faced smile that inevitably breaks into gales of mischief filled laughter, “according to Jekwu, the night is still a toddler” he would say.
Our leader has taken the long, lonely walk into the night, towards the beckoning light. For the rest of us who he left behind, the night is still a toddler. We need to make the best of today for we know not when the night will mature for us, when it will be our own turn to take that long, lonely walk into the night.
My heart goes out to Herbert's parents, children, siblings, and his immediate and extended families.
Herbert is…was a great man and will live forever in our hearts.
Pardon my rambling, I already miss the man.
- Dr. Jekwu Ozoemene
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