Within what is considered the corporate corridor in Nigeria, banking is the coolest corner. The media often presents bank GMDs, MD/CEOs and DMDs as pragmatic and pigheaded individuals who have no time for even trite pleasantries, not to mention mischievousness and malice in the workplace. However, once in a while, as with GT Bank’s Fola Adeola and Segun Agbaje, this impression is toppled and we see that bankers, however commanding their signatures, are people too.
The alleged feud between founding partner and former MD of Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc (GTCO Plc), Adeola, and its CEO, Agbaje, has reached a fully budded crescendo. Based on the recent transformation of the bank and the restructuring, there is a widespread conclusion that Agbaje has delivered his final uppercut to Adeola and won the supremacy contest.
Stories of the rift between the two well-known GT characters have been around since Agbaje took up the role of Acting MD in April 2011 following the supposed temporary leave of Tayo Aderinokun, the bank’s co-founder. According to insiders, Aderinokun and Adeola were no longer as chummy as they used to be when they founded the bank. This carried on until the former passed away in the same 2011 and opened the way for Agbaje to step in.
For reasons still unclear to the public, Agbaje reportedly inherited Aderinokun’s distrust of Adeola, and the allegedly acrimonious relationship only spiralled further out of control as the years progressed. It was further worsened by the fact that Agbaje seemed to be getting more control of the bank’s executive board, whereas Adeola could only act from the shadows.
Still, even though Adeola has been visibly out of the bank’s round table, his pioneering contributions made way for his influence across the board. Therefore, besides Agbaje who essentially inherited Aderinokun’s jurisdiction, there is no other individual with enough clout to rattle Adeola’s control inside GTBank.
But things have changed.
With the transformation of what used to be GTB into a private limited company operating under GTCO Plc, the parent company, Agbaje’s claim to hegemony has been solidified. Thus, Adeola has become an outsider whose shadow will only remain in the history of the company, never stretching towards its future.
Agbaje’s move, folks have begun to claim, is the end of Adeola’s hold on anything Guaranty Trust.