ACCESS Holdings Plc has appointed Bolaji Agbede as the bank’s acting Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) following the death of its former GCEO, Herbert Wigwe.
Wigwe was involved in a helicopter crash in California near the Nevada border, United States of America (USA), on February 9.
He died in the crash with five others, including his wife and son.
The Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau had said it was working with the US National Transportation Safety Board in the investigation of the Airbus Helicopter EC130B4 crash that resulted in Wigwe and others’ deaths.
In a statement signed by Access Holdings’ Secretary, Sunday Ekwochi, dated Monday, February 12, the bank said Agbede’s appointment was subject to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) approval.
Until her recent appointment, Agbede was the bank’s most senior founding executive director in charge of Business Support.
She has almost three decades of professional experience cutting across banking and business consultancy services. She commenced her professional career in 1992 at Guaranty Trust Bank and served in various capacities within the commercial banking and operations functions, rising to the position of manager in 2001.
She subsequently served as the Chief Executive Officer of JKG Limited, a business consulting outfit, in 2003.
Agbede joined Access Bank Plc in 2003 as an Assistant General Manager and managed the bank’s portfolio of chemical trading companies. She served as the bank’s head of group human resources between 2010 and 2022 and was appointed the bank’s founding executive director of business support in 2022.
Commenting on the appointment, the chairman of Access Holdings, Abubakar Jimoh, said, “The appointment of Ms. Agbede is in alignment with our robust succession planning practice. We are strongly convinced that Ms. Agbede, being the company’s most senior executive with exceptionally rich, professional and leadership experience and understanding of the Access culture, would provide the much-needed leadership to steer the company towards the attainment of its strategic vision of building a globally connected community and ecosystem, inspired by Africa for the world.”
The ICIR reports that Agbede’s appointment makes ten females currently holding top positions in Nigeria’s banks.
Other bank’s CEOs are Miriam Olusanya, GT Bank; Yemisi Edun, FCMB; Halima Buba, SunTrust Bank; Ireti Samuel-Ogbu, Citibank Nigeria; Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe, Fidelity Bank; Tomi Somefun, Unity Bank; Kafilat Araoye, Lotus Bank; Bukola Smith, FSDH Merchant Bank; and Yetunde Oni, Union Bank.