By Moses Nosike
Abiodun Akinjayeju is  the  Vice President of First Bank Nigeria Capital, (FBN). In this interview with Saturday Vanguard Business, he explains the importance of  guidance and counselling while making a choice in any career.

He equally says that the lack of risk management structure was responsible for mismanagement and misappropriation of  funds in those banks found wanting by the  CBN. Excerpts:

How was your growing-up and choice of career?
I’m a man of 46  years old, born in a rusty town of Ondo State. I had my primary and secondary education in the state in those days when schools were under the missionaries. I also participated in what the youths of time will always do during growing up.

However, I make bold to say here that I came from a very humble background. I mean a humble background in the true sense of it. My father was a peasant farmer while my mother was a petty trader. And I used to follow my father to the farm as well because that was the source of our sustenance and where I got sponsorship for my education.

My mother was a petty trader and I also got involved in hawking, trying to help my mother out in her petty trading. Unlike nowadays when we see hawking as child labour, during our days, it was seen as being complementary to our parents.
My primary school days were exciting and challenging.

We used to treck some miles from home to school with your mega boxes  on our heads, not  these days when pupils are taken to schools in cars. But it was  good in the sense that we had indeed good teachers that ensured good morales and educational up-bringing, unlike these days when some teachers use  the time for teaching for their private businesses.

While growing-up, I had  elders I was looking up to, people that had been there before me because I was the 9th child in my family. So, I saw my elder brothers and sisters pass through the school system and achieved good things for themselves and I wanted to be like them, and I had the encouragement.

During that period of career building, was your mother the only wife of your father?
My father had three wives and in those  days, it was like a  phenomenon for them because it was believed that the larger your family , the more the farm land you will cultivate.

That was the driving motive at that time. So at the time of career building, there were challenges in terms of growing- up, rivalries among your peers of the other mothers, but I would say that ours were exceptional in the sense that there was understanding among us as we helped one another in one way or the other in getting things done.

So, when I finished my primary school in 1974, because of lack of fund, I had to wait for a year to enable my elder brother get ahead in the secondary school before I was enrolled and that made it possible for  my colleagues to be ahead of me in the secondary school. When I later enrolled, I found  it exciting and challenging, but at the end of  my secondary school career, I made Grade 1.

Thereafter, I did a bit of civil engineering for two years when I moved to Ondo State Polytechnic to study Civil Engineering. At that time, there was nothing like   guidance and counselling in my choice of career because most of my elderly ones had gone to Lagos and some travelled  abroad. Nobody guided me on selection of courses,  until one of my elderly brothers who is an Aero Engineer came back from Scotland.

Then, I was almost completing my OND on Civil Engineering. He came to the school and asked what  I’m doing in engineering school. He said he  is electrical engineer, my other brother is into Process and Technology, that I should be in a business school.

I thought he was not making sense, but he persuaded me to leave the Polytechnic and go back and take JAMB and go to business school which I did.

I tell you, that was really 360degrees  turn around in my career. I had to leave Civil Engineering. After I sat for JAMB, I passed and had admission into University of Nigeria, Nsukka to study Accountancy in 1984 to 1988. I had 2.1 in Accountancy, and I was one of the best students in my department. That earned me prizes from ICAN, Lever Brothers and other companies.

In 1988, I came to Lagos for my NYSC to serve in a Merchant bank, but when I got there,  management told me that youth corpers for engagement had been interviewed three months before youth service camp resumed. So, I had to go back to NYSC and they reposted me to PPMG, an auditing firm.

There I served for some time. Later, the bank called me again that they are  in need of  my service. That was how I left PPMG for a Merchant bank to continue my youth service. At the end of the service, the bank offered me a job in 1990.

When choosing a career, what should one consider?
During our growing-up then, everybody wants to be a doctor, lawyer or an engineer. People saw these disciplines as the most lucrative courses that can fetch you good jobs.

Considering the Udorji’s era of oil boom, where there was massive construction work all over the places and people with these course I mentioned were making a fair day. And because of that, everybody wanted to study the courses and be like them, unlike now when things have changed, some engineers find it difficult to make ends meat except you have to be in any of the multi-national firms for you to make it.

So, we were really in-tune with hype at that point in time and not what it can do to you or how it can get you self-employed as it were.
What do think it would have been, if you had not changed career?

So far, I am thankful to God who has helped me alot and grateful to my elder brother that persuaded me to change engineering for business courses.

Looking backward now I would say that the opportunity I had in the banking industry, I probably wouldn’t had ventured into it if I had remained in the engineering profession than in the business world. But with the benefit of going to university to study accountancy, get qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Stockbroker that also created chance for me in terms of career and job opportunities.

Having been working in the financial sector since you left school, what’s your take on the economy, since after the banking reform?

After the amount of banking consolidation, was a situation that posted on banks so much money on their hands and there was much lack of risk management policy in place to actually manage the risk element in some of the transactions they got into.

As a result, some of the monies that were raised arising from that consolidation were flickered away in stock market bubbles, property market bubbles, and of course traders also contributed in no small way, creating those bubbles that the banks had to lose so much money in the process of banking some of those transactions particularly in the stock market where they were supposed to earn margin loans articulated by traders and stock brokers and the bubbles busted.

And again, there was a meltdown worldwide which Nigeria was not immuned to that; oil prices came down and of course foreign exchange swift as a result, some of those loans were irrecoverable and it created bad effects in those banks. All this arose as a result of inadequate risk management structure that the bank consolidation would have putten in place to enable us manage those bubbles capitals better at that time.