“BANKING CAREER IS DEAD IN NIGERIA” – TOPE FASUA, FORMER BANKER

Tope Fasua is an economist, accountant, columnist, author and a consultant. A fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Tope studied economics at the Ondo State University where he finished as the best graduating student in his department, faculty and university at large in 1991. He had his second degree, Msc Financial Markets & Derivatives, from the London Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. He started his career in 1992 with the defunct Citizens Bank. He later worked with Standard Trust Bank and Equatorial Trust Bank where he rose to the position Principal Manager/ Regional Director (Abuja). With executive education courses from the London Business School and the Harvard University, Tope is a regular economic and financial markets analyst on television. He is the author of the books, CRUSHED! (2011) and THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOUR CAREER DISAPPEARS (2013). The former banker is the CEO of Global Analytics Consulting

In this PART ONE of our 4-part interview Tope discusses his background and banking career.

1. You were one of our facilitators at the JarusHub Career Conference that held in Lagos in September 2013, and many of the participants wondered how someone that belonged in “Generation X” knew so much about almost everything in modern age, from technology to the New Media. In other words, they, who belonged in the Gen Y, ended up being the one that were “old school” during your lecture. What is responsible for this versatility and knowledge of areas people of your generation care less about?

Thanks for considering me worthy of being interviewed and it’s an honour to be able to contribute my quota to the great discussions going on at JarusHub. Versatility? Well, I don’t want to be immodest, but somehow it is no longer a luxury to be versatile. I read and knew a long time ago, that the world would be more and more in need of ‘generalists’ than specialists. They said that generalists are the ones that employ specialists especially if they are able to coordinate the activities of others. Since we all have 24 hours a day to spend, we should try and devote most of that to learning new things and opening up our minds.

So for me, I’ve always been lucky to mop up knowledge from wherever I can get some. One of the reasons is because I went to a young secondary school – one of those created in the Awolowo/Jakande era. In that secondary school, we were the very first set and there was a lot of inexperience. I cannot recall that we had career advisors or anything of that sort, and I was very very young then, like 9 years old in form 2. So I didn’t know what I was doing, except that everything was for fun. I used my notebooks to draw cartoons and generally played around. In form 3, I found myself in Commercial Class, because I knew I wasn’t at the same level, intellectually, with those super-nerds in Science Class. But there I was, taking disparate subjects like Biology, Agric Science, then Fine Arts, Economics, Accounts, and so on. My subjects were just all over the place, but that meant I was grabbing a bit here and a bit there. Meanwhile at home, I read everything I could lay my hands on. My Dad kept some of his old books, and magazines – like Readers Digest – in our room and me and my brother would leaf through them. I read some of the classics like Homer’s Odyssey and The Iliad, my Dad’s copies, among many other books.

In those days, books really used to pass around. I read almost all the James Hadley Chase, Nick Carter, Harold Robbins and so on. One of my grouses with the new idea of e-books, is how would our children read what we read, since there are no shelves to put the e-books and kindle books that we’ve read, yet there is much history in being able to see through the minds and perceptions of one’s forebears. I also picked up Scrabble back then, which greatly affected my perception of words and writing, because we would then use a Chambers dictionary to find words and so on. It was a glorious time.

Later on in University, I found the allure of sociology, political science, geography, so strong that I took the courses as electives even when I didn’t have to. I would visit the library and read only picture encyclopedia. I reckon these events sort of shaped my mind to know a lot over time. As a worker, I was also very fiery and quite interested in national and international affairs. From the moment mobile phones became available (nought-nine-nought), I would call into radio stations as I drove to work and offer my opinions. Later I started writing for a few of them. In writing my first book, I decided to really study world history, such as to be a sort of authority. That was sometime in 2007. The rest as they say, is history. Too long. I don’t think I’ve ever told these stories anywhere else. It’s about my autobiography.

2. You spent more than a decade in the banking industry, from the early 90s to the mid-2000s, if you have another opportunity to start your career again, will you still choose a banking career?

Funny enough I will. In spite of my misgivings about the banking industry today. Banking today is dead, I’m sorry. I pity those who are there these days, but a few who are in good departments like Treasury where they can do a lot of exciting interbank deals. Those are investment bankers. The rest is treated as detritus. These days they create so many redundant ranks. I know people who have been in the banking industry for ten years still marking time as Assistant Officers!

Our time was exciting. We got promoted yearly or every one and half years. We were exposed. Some were sent for training abroad. We had hope. We were given responsibilities. Some became branch managers at 27. I did at 28. We could propose deals. We had open meetings with our MDs and were required to speak up. It was an age of innocence indeed. In those days you became an account officer and they allocated accounts to you to manage. No one cursed your mother for not bringing in deposits. No one asked you to open 5,000 accounts that you could never possibly manage! You accounts were relationships, not just numbers in the system that you needed to make your quota or be sacked.

Jarus (m) presenting plaque to Mr. Tope Fasua, FCA, CEO Global Analytics, after his presentation, while Participant Omotola Rashida assists, at the JarusHub Career Conference, September 2013

I think those running the industry today, who have been around for long – even before I had my stint – are to blame. No one was thinking strategically. It was all about ego; whose bank is bigger and more profitable. Today, everyone is in a stump, and even I am coming up with an article to draw attention to the fact that we are barraging our banks to death as it were. But the core bankers have a lot of the blame. So yes, if I could turn back the hands of time to that exciting period in 1992, when I walked straight into the office of Mr Bola Segun, our pioneer HR Manager at Citizens Bank, Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island, and he asked if I wanted to take the test immediately, and I told him ‘No sir! Let me come back tomorrow’, because I had walked the whole of Awolowo Way from one Merchant Bank to another in the hot afternoon. If I could relive that time I started working in Funds Transfer Local Unit under another great boss, a veteran of the Civil War who later spent a long time in the US in those days of Afro and Black Awareness, someone we call “Brother Dan!”, a time when we worked late and were entitled to dinner at a place called Adema on Anifowoshe Street in VI, yes, I would love to start in banking. But not the kind of banking we have in Nigeria today. There are no careers anymore and we are urging the CBN to step in and do something about it.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Parts 2, 3 and 4  will be published tomorrow, Sunday and Monday respectively.