Zenith Bank @ 35: A Former Staff Reflects – Toni Kan

The first day I met Jim Ovia, Chairman and founder of Zenith Bank, I was dressed in a black t-shirt, blue jeans and black leather slippers and there is a reason why this detail is important – I had come to interview for a job I didn’t apply for.

It was a Saturday in 2003, and I had gone to work with my boss, Magnus Onyibe, who was then Head of Corporate Communications at Continental Trust Bank which would eventually morph into UBA alongside its “cousin”, Standard Trust Bank.

We went to lunch at the Calabar restaurant behind Ajose Adeogun and as we drove past Zenith Bank, Mr. Onyibe had wound down the window and asked whether Oga was around.

Oga was Jim Ovia and as fate would have it, he was around. I sat quietly as they conversed in the Ika language spoken by the Agbor people. I had lived in Ute-Erumu for a bit and could pick up words.
I had been introduced as “a writer who works in a bank” and at some point, in their conversation, Mr Ovia had asked whether he could speak to me and when my boss said yes, he asked me to move closer to his desk.

He asked a few questions then gave me a piece of paper and asked me to read and analyse the essay written on it. I read it and told him it was written by a young lady who had just moved abroad and was homesick from loneliness and culture shock.

“How did you know it’s a girl? How could you deduce all that from the essay?” The questions came hard and fast and after “the interrogation”, he asked me to write him an essay. He was due to deliver the Yakubu Gowon lecture and wanted me to take a stab at it. He gave me the theme and topic, and I went on my way.

I spent the weekend working on the essay and by Monday evening it was ready. I didn’t have his email, so, I had to walk from Sanusi Fafunwa to Ajose Adeogun to deliver the essay I had written to Ben, his Executive Assistant.

The next evening, the phone in my boss’s office rang and he asked me to come speak to Ben. Ben asked me to wait while he patched me on to Mr. Ovia. Mr Ovia came on the line, said he liked the essay and was impressed by the quick turn-around. I said thank you.

Then he asked me two questions that practically changed my life.

“How much do you earn at Continental Trust Bank.” And then “If I paid you xyz (which was double what I was earning) will you come and work for me?”
I resumed at Zenith Bank in March 2003 and even though it was a bank, it became for me a learning ground. Working with and for Jim Ovia was an opportunity to learn about banking and business but more about hard work and diligence and excellence.

Jim Ovia would travel abroad, fly back into Nigeria and drive past his Ikoyi home straight to work. A few years after working with him, I discovered he came to the office on January 1st. When I asked, he said “if the first rain falls on January 1st will the farmer say its New Year’s Day and not go to plant?”
I also discovered, before we moved to the new Zenith building that the old building was painted every Friday night which was why it remained spotlessly white.

The first thing I realised about Jim Ovia was that he was a technology fanatic. His favourite book, back then, was Bill Gates “Business at the Speed of Thought” and his most used phrases were probably “leapfrogging technology”, “information super-highway” and “bridging the digital divide.”

He was a firm believer in the transformational power of information technology. He, in many ways anticipated the coming of Artificial Intelligence and wanted to get young Nigerians interested and invested. The story is that Jim Ovia was exposed to computers when he worked in a New Orlean’s bank and fell in love with the technology.
When I joined Zenith Bank, he was active in the Nigerian Internet Group and hosted the Youth Empowerment for ICT, an annual event which held at the MUSON Center and had young secondary school students as the primary audience.

When other banks were still talking about cables and WAN and LAN, those of us working in Zenith Bank had dispensed with all that and were using WiFi.
Jim Ovia was also a great spotter of talent. Look at the roll call of Zenith Bank staff who have gone on to do great things in Nigeria from the incumbent Vice President to the immediate past governor and Akwa Ibom state; the minister of state for finance and ED at NEPC. The list goes on and on.

JO as we all called him would hire you as an HR or Admin staff but once he discovered that you had other talents, he would make sure you honed them and became an asset and so even though I had come to work in corporate communications, I ended up in Research and Economic Intelligence because he noticed that I won an award for my undergraduate research topic.

I ended up working on the monthly MPRs, reviewing and summarising the Basel II accord document, identifying and working on the viability of new branches and more.

Two decades later, I am a better man for having worked at Zenith Bank in my writing, research and business endeavours.

Launching the Zenith Economic Quarterly (ZEQ) alongside my friend Eunice Sampson helped me understand macroeconomics, reviewing the Basel II accord document exposed me to banking and its minimum capital requirements as it relates to credit risk, operational risk and market risk, but more importantly to corporate governance best practices just as working on the MPRs with my friend Taju Ahmed taught me about banking and profitability.

I look back at my time there as Zenith Bank celebrates its 35th anniversary and I am glad to have contributed a little to its success.

I was part of the small group that organised the very first Zenith Bank Youth parade (alongside Boye ADENIJI and Alero Mafeni with Madam Nonye Ayeni leading us.) The parade still runs till today but what makes me happiest is when I see the Zenith Bank advert on CNN with the tagline – People. Technology. Service.

People use it and millions know it but not many realise who coined it. It was pure serendipity. Sylvester Ukut and I had just shown JO the first edition of the Zenith Digest which we had produced. The outside back cover was bare, and he asked why? “Put an advert there,” he ordered.

So we went back to our office and inserted the photo of the new Zenith Heights but we needed a copy aside from the well-known “in your best interest” and that was when it hit me; Zenith Bank is all about “People, Technology and Service” and I am happy to see that 35 years later, those three core principles haven’t waned.

Happy 35th birthday, Zenith Bank!

Toni Kan, a PR and communication expert writes from London.