Yewande Sadiku, CEO and Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission will leave her post after completing a five-year tenure. She handed over to the most senior Director of the Commission, Mr Emeka Offor on Friday, 24th September 2021.

The handing over ceremony which held at Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment was supervised by the Honorable Minister of State of the Ministry, Ambassador Maryam Katagum.

This was disclosed by the NIPC, after an interview with the outgoing investment promotion boss, with reports saying she refused a second tenure.

In the interview, Sadiku said her time at the agency has revealed that public sector capacity is possible.

“I joined NIPC on the 8th of November 2016, in the 3 years before I Joined NIPc there had been 5 substantive and 2 active executive secretaries,” she said.

She disclosed that from a leadership perspective, since the time of her joining, the organisation had been through a number of changes, also citing challenges initially faced including the pioneer status incentive, which was the major revenue of the NIPC and which had been on administrative suspensions since 2015 due to allegations of abuse of process. Sadiku also added that from record keeping perspective, the quality and depth of records keeping she first encountered were slim, however, she said: “I came to NIPC believing it was possible to do many things. One of the first things I said is I will do many things to work with them…. I heard stories about the reality of the public sector, but I believe that where there are bad people, there are also good people.

“I went through a series of methods to find the right kind of people in NIPC interested in doing the work, I am particularly proud of the fact because I did not come here with aides or assistant, I worked with the people I met. 5 years later, I will say we have made material achievements in that period.

“The fact that all of the work that was done over that period was done with the same people that I met is a clear demonstration that there is capacity, latent but possible, in the public sector,” she said.

What you should know

Yewande Sadiku has gone from just being a public servant doing her job, to one of the most popular Nigerian investment bankers and public servants. Within the last five years serving as the Executive Secretary/CEO of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), she has had to answer summons from major investigative bodies in Nigeria, in response to petitions from different corners.

Yewande Sadiku was born on July 27, 1972, and spent some of her early years in Zaria. She had her secondary school education in Lagos and proceeded to the University of Benin, Edo State, Nigeria to bag a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Chemistry in 1992. By 1995, she had obtained her Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom.

Sadiku was recruited straight from the university during the on-campus recruitment at the University of Benin and joined Nigeria International Bank Limited (now known as Citibank Nigeria) at the entry-level immediately after school. In 1994, she moved over to Investment Banking & Trust Company Limited (IBTC) also at entry-level, and she spent the next two decades of her career there as an investment banker.

Sometime in the course of her career, she also did some freelance writing for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Nigeria Country Report and Country Finance between 1999 and 2000. At IBTC, she handled major mergers and restructuring by corporate firms and multinationals in Nigeria.

She also handled trillions of Naira in long-term debt and equity financing across various sectors of the economy. The $535 million first dual listing of a Nigerian company (Seplat) on the London and Nigerian Stock Exchanges in 2014; the $13.5 billion merger of Benue Cement Company with Dangote Cement which birthed the largest listed company on the NSE in 2010; the largest private placement in Nigeria – MTN Nigeria, 2008 are some of the deals she took part in.

She rose through the ranks working with the bank till when it became the Stanbic IBTC Group, and she became the Chief Executive of Stanbic IBTC Capital, the Group’s investment banking arm, in November 2012. She also served as Executive Director, Corporate and Investment Banking at Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc, a subsidiary of Standard Bank of South Africa, Africa’s biggest bank before going into public service.

Over the last five years as a public servant, Sadiku has completely altered both processe and results in the agency. Some of her achievements include publishing the Compendium of Investment Incentives in Nigeria, bringing all the duly approved tax incentives into one document, and developing a clear strategy to encourage, promote and coordinate investments in Nigeria.