Last Tuesday, Access Bank hosted a farewell party in honour of its erstwhile Chairman, Mr. Paul Usoro S.A.N.
His successor Mrs. Ifeyinwa Osime has firmly occupied the seat since January. All the same, better late than much, much later.
Apart from its dazzling and phenomenal success in a relatively short time span, Access Bank PLC has a firmly established reputation for giving great corporate parties:
- Access Bank Polo Cup 2023 Cape Town
- Access Bank UK Polo Day
- Access AT 35 Anniversary Gala.
The one that takes the cake is Access Bank end-of-year/send forth party for outgoing Managing Director Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede on Saturday 14 December 2013 at Eko Hotel, Victoria Island. Maria Carey was on stage live !!
Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969, Huntington, New York, U.S.) is an American pop singer noted for her remarkable vocal range, which covers five octaves. She was one of the most successful female performers of the 1990s and remained popular into the early 21st century. In 2019 she achieved her 19th number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, which set records for the most chart-topping singles by a woman and by a solo artist.
Though some sources state that Carey was born in 1970, a newspaper from 1969 features her birth announcement. She was the youngest of three children born to an Afro-Venezuelan father, Alfred Roy Carey, and a white Irish American mother, Patricia Carey (née Hickey). Her father was an aeronautical engineer, and her mother was a vocal coach and former opera singer. When she was three years old her parents divorced, and she was raised by her mother.
Mariah Carey began performing as a child. After graduating (1987) from highschool in Greenlawn, New York, she moved to New York City to pursue a singing career. She made a demo tape that led Tommy Mottola, an executive at Columbia Records, to sign her in 1988; the couple married in 1993. Her debut album, Mariah Carey (1990), showcased her incredible vocal range and signature “whistle notes” and blended several musical genres, including gospel, pop, and rhythm and blues (R&B). It was a huge success, spawning such hits as “Vision of Love,” and in 1991 Carey won Grammy Awards for best new artist and best female pop vocalist. That same year the title track from her follow-up album, Emotions, became her fifth consecutive chart-topping single.
I recall attending a really fabulous party at Eko Hotels and Suites in 2021 where the main attraction was Nobel Laurette Economist, Turkish-born American Economist was Daron Acemoglu (MIT) co-author of “Why Nations Fail”, who argued that in order for the Nigerian economy to grow faster, there’s a need for the Government to prioritise wage increment and the creation of employment for its citizens.
Acemoglu stated this while giving a lecture to mark First Bank’s 125th anniversary celebration event, which was held at Eko Hotels & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.
The notable Economist was speaking on the theme: ‘Institutional Impact on Economic growth and Improved Living Standards.”
He emphasized that job creation and other elements such as good health and education, are needed to achieve high-quality economic growth in Nigeria. According to him, if these issues can be addressed properly for the benefit of the country, it will have a ripple effect on the economy.
This is the book the founders of Access Bank Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede and Herbert Wigwe used to reference “Corporate Bible” or the foundational blueprint for their institution-building philosophy.
My last visit to Access Bank Head Office was for a meeting with Herbert Wigwe over my shares in Meridien Equity Bank which was taken over by Inter-Continental Bank. Thereafter, Inter-Continental Bank was taken over by my Access Bank Plc. We were also going to discuss Potomac (the company owned by late Professor Olufemi Williams) and its property at Victoria Island and the shares of my grandfather Dr. J.K. Randle in Access Bank Plc.
We were interrupted by a telephone call which compelled Herbert to bring our discussions to an abrupt end. It was the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Godwin Emefiele calling from Abuja and the matter was sufficiently grave for Herbert to assure him that he would leave Lagos immediately to see him in Abuja before the end of the day. I am not at liberty to disclose what I overheard. Herbert was very deferential to the CBN Governor. A week later Herbert, his wife Doreen Chizoba and son Chizi along with Bimbola Ogunbanjo died in a helicopter crash in the United States of America on 9th February 2024. May their souls rest in peace.
The seamless manner whereby the bank was able to manage the succession was a truly remarkable feat. It is a candidate as a case study by Business Schools. Access Bank demonstrated amazing resilience.
Access Bank, a subsidiary of Access Holdings Plc, has grown from a modest commercial bank into one of Africa’s largest financial institutions. Its key accomplishments span market expansion, mergers, financial milestones, and sustainability:
Market Expansion & Strategic Mergers
- Landmark Diamond Bank Merger (2019): Merged with Diamond Bank, creating one of Africa’s largest retail banks by customer base and Nigeria’s largest bank by assets at the time.
- Continental & Global Footprint: Expanded operations across 3 continents and 24 markets, serving over 60 to 63 million customers with more than 900 branches and service outlets. It established a presence in South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Rwanda, Ghana, and the UK, alongside representative offices in China, India, Lebanon, Hong Kong, and the UAE.
- Recent Sub-Saharan Acquisitions: Acquired majority shares in Standard Chartered Bank’s subsidiaries in Angola, Cameroon, The Gambia, and Sierra Leone, as well as BancABC Tanzania.
- Holding Company Restructuring (2022): Transitioned into a Holdco structure to diversify beyond traditional banking into pensions, insurance, and payment services.
Financial & Capital Achievements
- Massive Asset & Revenue Growth: Grew total assets to over ₦40.8 trillion and gross revenue to ₦4.8 trillion (as of recent financial reporting periods).
- Green Bond Pioniereering (2019): Issued Nigeria’s first-ever corporate green bond to finance environmentally friendly projects, alongside raising international capital via Eurobonds and Additional Tier 1 capital issues.
Digital Innovation & Inclusion
- Access More App: Scaled its digital ecosystem, processing over 1.1 billion transactions worth upwards of ₦157 trillion on its flagship digital platform.
- Specialized Initiatives: Launched inclusion and growth platforms like the “W” Initiative (focused on women’s financial empowerment) and SME-focused accelerators.
Sustainability & Awards
- Multiple Industry Recognition: Recognized repeatedly as an eight-time Karlsruhe Award winner, eleven-time World Finance Most Sustainable Bank, and recipient of multiple 2026 honors including the Global Brand Frontier Awards (Best Financial Inclusion and Innovation Bank for Africa) and Euromoney awards.
Paul is an accomplished professional – as a lawyer. So also is his wife Mfon.
Between them, they have blazed a unique trail in the Air, Land, and Sea.
Paul had the foresight to venture into the legal aspects of the Communications industry via Econet when the first batch of GSM Licences were granted by President Olusegun Obasanjo in Abuja on 1st February, 2001.
By the time General Olusegun Obasanjo became president in May 1999, Nigeria’s telecommunications infrastructure was, for most of its 120 million citizens, functionally non-existent. From independence in 1960 to 2000, the number of active telephone lines nationwide had grown to just 400,000, at an annual growth rate of about 10,000 lines over four decades.
Mfon with tremendous gusto pitched her tent in the maritime sector as the first female Director-General of NIMASA (Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency) from August 2005 to May 2006.
I have practised as a Chartered Accountant for fifty-seven years; and as a partner at Peat Marwick Mitchell (later Peat Marwick Ani Ogunde & Co.) which was the predecessor firm of KPMG where I also served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. I belong to the class of “inheritors”. We took over from what had been a largely expatriate professional class – Chartered Accountants; Architects; lawyers; Engineers etc.
Back then (while the British ruled Nigeria), government official envelopes carried the bold inscription “OHMS” (On Her Majesty’s Service) and the letter would be signed by a top official (Minister or Permanent Secretary) with a flourish – “I remain your obedient servant”.
All that has disappeared.
Anyway, there I was at KPMG when Paul came to see me about his special interest in GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications).
He very quickly through sheer determination and guts made a huge name for himself in law, communications, and eventually banking.
Regardless of the remarkable success they have achieved, Paul and Mfom Usoro have remained humble, unassuming and well-grounded. They are a remarkable couple.
Quite unlike the case of Olivier Wentworth (a lawyer and banker) who having had too much to drink collapsed in the street, in London. The police came to his rescue and attempted to provide first aid in a vigorous effort to resuscitate him. Alas, he was gone. The police checked his phone and called his wife.
“Are you Mrs. Wentworth?”
She said yes.
Next question was: “Are you Doris?
She said yes.
The Policeman then proceeded to gently break the bad news to her.
“We found your husband slumped on the street.
He appeared to have suffered a massive heart attack”
The response was:
“No, that cannot be my husband.
My husband, does not have a heart.”
Also, some of you may have watched the film “Grab The Money And Run” directed and produced by Woody Allen. Two gangs of armed robbers end up at the same bank. They decide to adopt democracy and Woody Allen grabs a microphone to announce to their victims: “Who do you prefer? My gang or the other gang?”
Tiv bankers” refers to the notable presence and networking of professionals from the Tiv ethnic group of Central Nigeria (primarily Benue State) working across commercial and financial institutions in Nigeria.
- Association of Tiv Bankers Network: A professional and social network connecting Tiv individuals working in the banking and financial sector, fostering peer support, mentorship, and community-building (such as through the Association of Tiv Bankers Network on Facebook).
- Grassroots Financial Traditions: In traditional Tiv culture, community-based financial cooperation is well-established through informal savings and credit systems known as Bam (similar to Esusu or Adashi in other parts of Nigeria), where members pool regular contributions to issue short-term loans or fund shared agricultural and social goals.
- Cultural Presence in Urban Banks: Tiv professionals are widely noted by observers and community members to have a visible workforce presence in banks, customer service, and security roles across major Nigerian cities like Abuja and Lagos.
Tiv Bankers
Emmanuel Nwude – Director of Union Bank.
He sold an airport which never existed for $242 MILLION!
That was Emmanuel Nwude Odinigwe, who used to be a Director of Union Bank of Nigeria Plc.
While he was in office from 1995 to 1998, he was responsible for one of the largest scams in the history of banking.
He managed to get the executives of Banco Noroeste in Brazil to put $242 million into a totally fake airport in Abuja; the bank actually paid for it.
He was finally arrested, put on trial, and found guilty.
A scenario straight out of a film, yet it did actually take place in Nigeria.
Emmanuel Nwude Odinigwe is Nigerian and was the former director of the Union Bank of Nigeria; he is world-famous for having been the mastermind behind one of the biggest banking frauds ever, consisting of him successfully selling a wholly fictitious airport to a Brazilian bank for 242 million dollars.
From 1995 to 1998 Nwude took on the identity of Paul Ogwuma, who was the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria at that time.
He approached Nelson Sakaguchi, a top executive at Brazil’s Banco Noroeste, and offered him a very profitable but completely made-up government scheme for the construction of a new airport in Abuja.
By means of forged official papers and fictitious government contracts, Nwude managed to get Sakaguchi to send a total of 242 million dollars into accounts which were under the control of Nwude and his accomplices.
The fraud was only uncovered in 1998 during an audit since Spain’s Banco Santander was then acquiring Banco Noroeste, which in the end caused the Brazilian bank to collapse.
Nwude was arrested in 2004 as a result of inquiries carried out by Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
In 2005 he admitted guilt and was given a sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment together with large-scale asset forfeitures.
He however obtained early release in 2006 on the basis of a plea agreement.
Nwude has recently been convicted once more.
On March 11, 2026, Justice Mojisola Dada of the Lagos Special Offences Court sentenced Nwude together with his two lawyers, Emmanuel Ilechukwu and Rowland Kalu, to a term of one year in prison.
The three had been found guilty of forgery and of unlawfully attempting to reclaim and sell the real estate properties which the court had earlier seized and set aside for payment to the victims as restitution from the original airport scam of the 1990s.
A closer examination of Emmanuel Nwude’s life and activities shows that there is a wide-scale weakness within the institutions involved, evidence of a carefully organized international operation, and a persistent effort to get back the wealth that had been stolen.
Nwude was not working by himself; the main group around him consisted of Christian Anajemba (who was eventually assassinated) and his wife, Amaka Anajemba; together, they pursued Nelson Sakaguchi, who was the Director of the Cayman Islands office of Brazil’s Banco Noroeste.
• Nwude pretended to be Paul Ogwuma, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and proposed to Sakaguchi a contract worth $242 million for the construction of a new airport in the country’s capital, Abuja.
Sakaguchi was guaranteed a personal bonus of astronomical proportions amounting to $20 million merely for arranging the transactions.
Driven by greed, he ignored all the internal bank compliance procedures and started breaking into the vaults of his own bank.
• From 1995 to 1998 Sakaguchi approved 17 separate wire transfers, the money being sent through a complex global network of shell companies and personal bank accounts which extended to Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States:
Nwude was able to wash and regularize the huge amount of cash that flowed in by means of his role as a director at the Union Bank of Nigeria.
The fact that the fraud was not noticed for three years was because Sakaguchi had control of the Cayman branch and carried out the falsification of the internal audits.
– In December 1997 Banco Santander, a major Spanish bank, was about to carry out the acquisition of the failing Banco Noroeste.
As part of the due diligence process, the auditors discovered a large discrepancy:
$242 million (amounting to roughly half of the bank’s total capital) was missing and was held in unbacked and uncollectible accounts located in the Cayman Islands.
In order to avoid a complete financial crisis and protect their reputations, the wealthy Simonsen and Cochrane families (who were the majority shareholders of Banco Noroeste) paid the missing $242 million from their own funds to complete the merger; the bank, however, collapsed soon afterwards and the two families then initiated a large-scale, private global search for the individuals in question.
The shareholders employed top-class forensic accountants and fraud recovery lawyers and actively pursued the investigation into Nwude’s empire.
A large part of the money had been turned into high-end real estate, such as high-rise office blocks, luxury residential complexes in Lagos and Abuja, and huge stock portfolios.
In the end, as a result of international pressure Nwude was forced to give in and returned an estimated $138 million by means of asset sales in several jurisdictions and restitution agreements.
Nwude’s criminal activities did not cease with his conviction in 2005; he continued to undermine the Nigerian legal system using his huge wealth.
When the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) first tried to take Nwude to court in 2004, it is said that he offered a suitcase full of $30,000 in cash to the EFCC’s first chairman, Nuhu Ribadu.
Ribadu turned down the offer and as a result Nwude was then slammed with further bribery charges.
• The case which resulted in his conviction on March 11, 2026 was based on a lengthy and complicated scheme.
From 2011 to 2012 Nwude conspired with his defence lawyers, Emmanuel Ilechukwu and Rowland Kalu.
Seeing that a number of his extremely luxurious properties in Lagos had been lawfully taken over by the Federal Government as compensation for the Brazilian victims, Nwude and his lawyers produced statutory documents and court deeds.
They managed to trick innocent buyers into buying the properties that had been seized by the government, thus ending up with millions of dollars from the same assets that had originally been stolen.
The legal proceedings continued for 2,913 days (amounting to almost eight years of active litigation) before Justice Mojisola Dada finally sent the three of them to prison.
If we are to fully grasp the extreme dimensions of the Emmanuel Nwude saga, then we must go beyond the simple account of the heist and examine the bizarre courtroom transcripts, the terrifying geopolitical consequences, and the psychological delusion which led to Nwude’s ultimate collapse in March 2026.
While he was being tried, Nwude employed a defence strategy which puzzled the international jurists.
Even though he had admitted guilt in 2005, Nwude surprisingly revised his version of events in subsequent hearings.
When giving evidence under oath, Nwude stated that he had absolutely no idea where the $242 million in his account had come from.
His defence maintained that he was just a passive businessman and that the large amount of money flowing into his Union Bank of Nigeria accounts was either a ‘coincidence’ or normal business transactions with third parties.
His high-profile defence team, headed by Emeka Okpoko (Senior Advocate of Nigeria), spent almost eight years setting up technical procedural obstacles and claimed that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) did not have constitutional powers to permanently seize or reassign his properties after his first release from prison.
The plan which resulted in Nwude being sent back to prison on March 11, 2026, demonstrates the way in which he used his lawyers as real criminal agents.
The conflict took place at a valuable commercial property:
Plot Y, Mobolaji Johnson Street, Oregun, Ikeja.
Nwude together with his lawyers, Emmanuel Ilechukwu and Rowland Kalu, drew up a wholly fictitious Power of Attorney and made up court orders.
In a bold move, Ilechukwu actually arranged for corrupt court sheriffs and police officers to carry out a physical raid on the Oregun property, thereby illegally expelling the legitimate firm (G.C. Nweze & Co) which had been holding the land on behalf of the fraud victims.
Nwude then submitted a large number of counter-petitions to various police departments in order to intimidate anyone who was attempting to stop him.
This is incredible, almost unbelievable.
The audacity can only pass for fiction.
Would somebody do this because the ‘society’ we live in, by whatever definition, does not ostracise criminals?
There must be an explanation for this.
This is too brazen.”
Bankers are not universally loved.
I was at a party some years ago at an exclusive private club in New York where top bankers were having a whale of a time. Most of their humour was self-deprecating. They regaled us with references to what Wittgenstein said about: “The Easiest way to rob a bank is to own it.”
That phrase captures one of the most famous insights in modern financial criminology.
“The best way to rob a bank is to own one” is the title of a definitive book on white-collar crime by William K. Black, an academic, author, and former senior US bank regulator.
Black coined and popularized this concept based on his firsthand investigations during the Savings and Loan (S&L) crisis of the 1980s. It explains how corporate insiders can weaponize their own institutions for personal gain.
The Mechanics of “Control Fraud”
In criminology, this tactic is known as control fraud—a scenario where a corrupt CEO or executive uses the company as a vehicle to steal. In his TEDx talk and writings, Black outlines the four-step mathematical formula these insiders use to “rob” their own banks from the inside:
- Grow like crazy: Drive rapid growth by aggressively issuing high-risk loans.
- Make bad loans with high yields: Target subprime or low-quality borrowers who agree to high interest rates and fees, creating the illusion of massive revenue.
- Employ extreme leverage: Fund the bank’s operations with massive amounts of debt relative to its actual equity.
- Maintain trivial loss reserves: Deliberately under-allocate funds for the inevitable loan defaults, artificially inflating current profits.
The Outcome
By following this recipe, the bank reports record-breaking short-term profits. Because executive compensation, bonuses, and stock options are tied to these inflated performance metrics, the owners and executives extract millions of dollars in personal wealth immediately.
When the bad loans eventually collapse years later, the bank fails, leaving depositors, investors, and taxpayers to foot the bill. While a traditional bank robber risks prison for a few thousand dollars, a control fraud perpetrator walks away with millions using nothing but a pen.
Jeffrey Archer.
My own contribution was the plagiarisation of my book: “Who Is Fooling Who?” by Jeffrey Archer in his book: “Not A Penny More”.
The party was on the 14th Floor. No 13th Floor!! Bankers are superstitious. 13 is considered unlucky.
When we left the party, it was raining heavily and I remembered the old saying: “Bankers lend you an umbrella when it is sunny and take it back
when it is raining.” On this occasion, there were no umbrellas.
However, when I reached home my gateman had to fetch an umbrella for e. it was a very old umbrella. It was branded boldly ACCESS BANK PLC – farewell to Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede
