Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe, the CEO of Access Holdings Plc, died in a helicopter crash in California on Saturday at the age of 57. He played a key role in transforming the bank from obscurity to the largest lender in the country.
When he and his partner bought the bank in 2002, it was the 65th largest in Nigeria. As of late September, the bank’s assets were valued N21.4 trillion.
His death, along with that of his wife and son, is a significant blow to corporate Nigeria, especially for Access Holdings, which recently lost its chairman, Bababode Osunkoya, due to “a brief illness.”
He was born in Ibadan in August 1966 to a civil servant father, who had previously commanded the state-owned Nigerian Television Authority, and a nursing mother. He hailed from Isiokpo, Ikwerre Local Government Area, Rivers State.
In 1987, Mr. Wigwe earned a second-class upper degree in accounting from the University of Nigeria Nsukka. He began as a graduate assistant for Coopers and Lybrand Associates Limited before becoming a chartered accountant in 1989.
In 1991, he earned a Master of Banking and Finance from North Wales University (now Bangor University) in the United Kingdom. He later earned a Master of Science degree in Financial Economics from the University of London and graduated from Harvard Business School’s Executive Management Program.
He had a fantastic career with Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), where he rose to the position of executive director at the age of 32.
In 2002, he partnered with Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, an executive director of GTB, to bid on Access Bank.
“We acquired the bank in March 2002. At the time, I was just 36 years old, but I already had ten years of senior management banking experience at GTB,” Mr Aig-Imoukhuede stated in his book, Leaving the Tarmac: Buying a Bank in Africa.
“As it was, I had until 2015 to continue growing the bank and prepare for a smooth transition to Herbert.”
According to Mr Aig-Imoukhuede, both men were regarded too young by Central Bank of Nigeria officials to purchase a bank at the age of 36, and the central bank postponed permission of the takeover on that basis.
Access Bank’s total assets stood at N2.6 trillion when Mr Wigwe took control in 2015, having previously served as deputy managing director since the acquisition. He would help increase it by 723 percent in less than nine years.
In 2019, he led the bank’s merger with Diamond Bank, resulting in Africa’s largest bank by customer base, with over 42 million customers at the time.
Under his leadership, the bank became a holding company in 2022, allowing it to expand into financial services like as payments, pensions, and asset management.
Mr Wigwe oversaw Access Holdings’ acquisitions of banks in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, and Angola.
Prior to his death, he was in the process of acquiring Uganda’s Finance Trust Bank Limited as well as Standard Chartered’s banking companies in Cameroon, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.
The business received CBN clearance in principle in January for a consumer lending division called Oxygen X Finance Company Limited, having previously purchased Megatech Insurance Brokers Limited, Sigma Pensions Limited, and First Guarantee Pension Limited.
Bloomberg reports that Mr. Wigwe invested $500 million in constructing a university in Isiokpo, Rivers State. The university will specialize in management, science, engineering, IT, and creative arts and is set to open this year.