LIFE AND TIMES OF HERBERT WIGWE, ACCESS HOLDING CEO

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Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe CFR, born on 15 August 1966, was a Nigerian banker and entrepreneur. He was the CEO of Access Holdings Plc, traded as Access Corporation until his death. Herbert was the Group Managing Director/CEO of Access Bank plc, one of Nigeria’s top five banking institutions, after succeeding his business partner, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede in January 2014 till April 2022.

Wigwe had a degree in accountancy from the University of Nigeria, an MA in Banking and Finance from the University College of North Wales (now Bangor), an MSc in Financial Economics from the University of London, and was an alumnus of the Harvard Business School Executive Management Program.

Wigwe started his career at Coopers & Lybrand, Lagos as a management consultant, later qualifying as a chartered accountant. After a stint at Capital Bank, he joined GTBank where he spent over a decade working in corporate and institutional banking, rising to become the executive director in charge of institutional banking.

In 2002, Wigwe and his business partner, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede bought into what was then a small commercial bank, Access Bank – at the time, the 65th largest of the 89 banks in the country.

Access Bank is now one of the top five banks in Nigeria and ranked among the top 500 global banks according to a 2015 report by The Banker magazine and is aiming to be Africa’s top bank.

It currently serves over 6.5 million account-holders, through 350 branches and with more than 1,500 ATMs in major centres across Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa and the UK.

In January 2015, Nigerian newspaper The Punch described him as “one of Nigeria’s stylish top executives”. He was married to Chizoba Wigwe, (née Nwuba) and had 6 children, which one of them died in the crash. Chizi, Tochi, He hailed from Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State, but lived and worked in Lagos.

Herbert Wigwe was confirmed dead alongside five other people after their helicopter crashed around the California-Nevada border in the United States of America, on February 10.

The five others included his wife, his son, Group Chairman of Nigerian Exchange Group Plc – Abimbola Ogunbanjo and the pilots.