“TOE studied me like a novel” – Sam Nwanze

Interview: By Bolanle Omisore 

 
TOE hi-jacked me; and I know I’m not alone in this. Many of us at Heirs Place have similar stories of walking around, minding our own business at our jobs and having Tony Elumelu enter the scene and change our futures as we know it.

It was 2004 and I was Finance and Performance Manager at Heirs Alliance, after having served as the CFO of Platinum Bank (now Keystone Bank). I had been working there less than a year when I got a call from the Chairman’s secretary at the time, Uche Amah, because TOE was preparing Standard Trust Bank to takeover UBA (though I didn’t know this at the time).

I was asked to meet the Chairman in Port Harcourt and once I landed, his typically busy schedule ensured though the hours passed, we never actually met. He said he had a flight to Warri, and we would talk in the car on the way to Warri – we never spoke. His phone rang off the hook and I just listened as he discussed deals. As we arrived at the airport, TOE had his executive assistant, at the time Obinna Ufudo, purchase a ticket for me to follow him to Warri; he promised we would speak on the flight.

Finally, 40,000 feet over the south of Nigeria, he turned me into his latest novel. TOE studied me like a novel – my ideas about banking, my thoughts on a particular deal and my background in finance. In the end, he told me I reminded him of himself.

We landed in Warri where TOE was meant to attend the burial of the father of the former governor of Delta State. He said I would catch the last flight back to Lagos, but as we sat in the airport talking, I watched my flight take off – the last flight of the day. With no other choice, we all headed to the burial, where TOE’s friends and colleagues announced they would host us. Obinna and I locked ourselves away at the house and chatted about the whirlwind day I had just had and what a future in the TOE family would look like.

By the time I got back to Lagos the next day, I already had an offer letter signed by Philips Oduoza that directed me to resume. I spent the next year working on the UBA takeover. After the deal closed and I ran the Financial Performance Management and Budget unit for about a year, I moved on to Bank PHB in 2005, where I stayed for more than 5 years. In 2010, as the mold for HH was being built, I re-joined the HH team and I haven’t looked back ever since.

HH represents the Nigerian Dream; an assemblage of brilliant, mostly Nigerian minds, coming together to seize opportunities that benefit a broad spectrum of Nigeria’s people. It is an honor to work alongside the world-class human resources that are drawn to the Group and to its Chairman. We represent the best that our country has to offer and together, we can surely change our country and ultimately, our continent, for the better.