Unity Bank has announced the appointment of Mr Ebenezer Kolawole as its acting managing director/chief executive officer following the retirement of Mrs Tomi Somefun, who has completed her tenure as MD/CEO and proceeded on terminal leave.

According to a statement from the bank on Wednesday, the appointment was announced at the bank’s 18th Annual General Meeting held in Lagos on Wednesday, after securing necessary approval from its primary regulator, the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Kolawole joined Unity Bank Plc as Chief Financial Officer in 2015 before he was appointed as the Executive Director to oversee Finance, Operations and Information Technology in February 2018.

The lender revealed that “Kolawole is a seasoned and consummate banker with over three decades of industry experience.

He began his financial services career at Caribbean Finance Limited (an affiliate of CFL in the Cayman Islands) in Kaduna in 1992. He later joined Ecobank, where he worked in various departments of the bank, both operations and finance suites, and rose to the position of deputy financial controller. He moved to Standard Trust Bank and worked in various strategic areas, including operations, regulatory risk management and finance suites, and played a pivotal role in the STB/UBA merger. Post-merger, he served as Chief Financial Officer of the United Bank for Africa. He moved to Mainstreet Bank as the bank’s group chief finance officer and actively drove the turnaround and transformation initiatives of the bank. He had a brief stint at Globacom, Nigeria’s leading indigenous telecommunications giant, where he served in various capacities for corporate business development.

“In line with the bank’s succession and business continuity plans, Mr Kolawole is saddled with the primary responsibility of finalising the bank’s ongoing corporate programmes and other strategic business initiatives of the institution.”

Mr Kolawole holds a First-Class (Hons) Degree in Accounting from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He has participated in several management/executive education programmes at Columbia Business School, New York, USA, and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.

He is a member of several professional bodies, including a Fellow of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria; a Fellow of the Institute of Credit Administration (FICA); an Honorary Member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria; an Associate Member of The Nigeria Institute of Management; a Member of the Institute of Directors, etc.

In August, the Central Bank of Nigeria approved the merger of Unity Bank and Providus Bank, stating that the action aligned with the provisions of Section 42 (2) of the CBN Act, 2007. The apex bank also announced the approval of N700bn support for the proposed merger between the banks.