From birth, you can say that my mum had a plan for my life. As a nurse, she hoped that one day Ayodele would become a doctor, fulfilling dreams she could not. I, on the other hand, had different dreams for myself.
I looked up to my parents; you may call it cliché, but from an early age, I knew I wanted to be an accountant. My choice was clear when my uncle who worked at a bank in my teens, came to visit and said to me to make my grades and I would be very successful in life.
I was a calm and gentle child, I still am, just adult sized. Numbers were no stranger to me, in the books or on the scoreboard as I loved and still love football, ManU for life! Asides from knowing I wanted to be an accountant, a part of me wonders if I truly ever wanted to be a football player. Growing up in the Nigeria of yesteryears, it was almost certain that such dreams don’t come true so deep down I knew it was nothing but a dream.
I was the best in mathematics in primary school and I’m not speaking like our parents who all came first in class, lol, at Phebean Nursery & Primary School, I was the best. I went on to Maryland Comprehensive Secondary School and Lagos State University, Ojo, where I bagged a degree in accounting and became a chartered accountant in 2006. I was in my 3rd year at the university. Call me outstanding but humble me might say it was Joseph’s luck!
A pivotal time in my career was when it dawned on me that I had joined the largest non-financial institution in Nigeria as an Accountant, and I became GCFO in just 9 years. This was my story at ARM which has a FUM of over a trillion naira. Why did I leave? You ask. What good is one’s power if it doesn’t touch more lives?
My superpower has always been the numbers, my goal in life as a child was to be an accountant but today, my goal is to be on the board of a multi-national company. I want to lend my skills to the greater good and that’s what working in finance does for me. My job as the GCFO of Transcorp Group gives me joy as I enjoy the ability to help make projections which determine a company’s future. I may not be CR7, but this is my field of expertise. I score financial goals for a living. Many might see just numbers, but I see sustainability, growth, resources, and food on many more tables and that is simply heroic to me.
