Mr Jubril Mobolaji Lawal |
Akinwuntan will retire in January 2022, upon reaching the
retirement age.
The bank has also announced Mr Jubril Mobolaji Lawal as
Regional Executive and Managing Director-designate.
Mr Patrick Akinwuntan started his career with Ecobank in
1996. He has held various senior and executive management positions in the over
25 years he has spent with the Ecobank Group, during which he had been based in
Ghana, Togo and Nigeria.
Before his appointment as Regional Executive and Managing
Director, Ecobank Nigeria, he was the Group Executive, Consumer Banking, where
he was responsible for leading the Consumer Banking business across Ecobank’s
global network of 39 countries, 35 of which are in Africa.
He managed the Group’s digital transformation journey and
has been instrumental in the development of the world-class digital products
and services that Ecobank provides today.
Akinwuntan is a seasoned banker who also previously was on
the Board of ETI as a Group Executive Director and held the positions of Group
Chief Finance Officer of ETI, Group Executive Director Domestic Bank,
Operations, Technology, Transaction and Retail Bank, including Executive
Director, Retail Bank at Ecobank Nigeria, among others.
A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of
Nigeria (FCA), he also holds a Master of Business Administration from the
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. He is an alumnus of the senior executive
program (SEP) of the Harvard Business school, an honorary Fellow of the
Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (FCIB), Fellow of the Institute of
Credit Administrators of Nigeria (FICA) and an Associate of the Chartered
Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (ACTI).
The MD designate, Mobolaji Lawal, is joining Ecobank from
GTBank Nigeria, where he was a senior banking executive and digital
transformation specialist for over 28 years.
He has deep involvement and experience in digital and retail
banking, corporate and commercial banking, credit risk management and corporate
finance. His previous experience includes being Executive Director at GTBank
Plc Nigeria, and Non-Executive Director roles at both GTBank Ghana Limited and
Nigeria Interbank Settlement Systems Plc.
He led the team that envisioned and implemented GTBank Plc’s
retail and digital banking strategy to achieve industry-wide leadership over a
ten-year period and he introduced new products and solutions that have helped
to deepen payments and access to digital financial services in Nigeria.
He was selected and appointed as Managing Director designate
following a keenly contested selection process, which included both internal
and external candidates.
Mobolaji Lawal holds a Bachelor of Law degree from the
Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria; B.L. from the Nigerian Law School and a
Master of Business Administration from Oxford University, United Kingdom. He
has also attended several executive management and banking specific
developmental programmes at leading educational institutions including Harvard
Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business and Institut Européen
d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD).
Commenting on the appointment, Ade Ayeyemi, CEO, Ecobank
Group, said: “We welcome Mobolaji Lawal to the Ecobank Group and we stand to
benefit from the extensive experience that he has acquired in various fields
across banking, which will play a major role in continuing to rebuild our
franchise in Nigeria.
Nigeria is a key market for us, in which we have seen
significant improvement over the past three years as we reposition and leverage
upon our pan-African strengths in digital products and services, payments and
as the go-to-bank for businesses seeking to grasp the growth opportunities being
created by the AfCFTA, across all our markets on the continent. I wish Mobolaji
the best and assure him of both my support and that of the entire Ecobank
Group.”
In spite of the huge investment in the water sector by the
government and international organisations, water scarcity has grown to become
a perennial nightmare for residents of Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital. This
report x-rays the lives and experiences of residents in getting clean, potable
and affordable water amidst the surge of COVID-19 cases in the state.