Fola Adeola and Tayo Aderinokun: How unfettered friendship gave birth to one of Africa’s biggest banks

A Yoruba adage, ‘ogún omodé ò lè seré fún ogún odún’, popularly, and quite factually, posits that 20 children can’t be friends for 20 years. But for the ones that stand the test of time, such friendships tend to transcend merely exchanging handshakes and beer and hanging out at choice parks while fawning over beautiful women’s derrières.

Such friendships oftentimes result in a family bond that is as strong as a mother’s love for her child. The best ones even result in great accomplishments. Accomplishments such as the Guaranty Trust Bank.

GTB, one of Nigeria’s leading banks, with a retail customer base of more than eight million people, is a product of unfettered friendship between Fola Adeola and Tayo Aderinokun. Both men had become friends when their path crossed ways during their high school days.

That friendship, which Adeola describes as “teenage friendship”, led both men to found the progressive bank in 1990.

Before then, Adeola and Aderinokun had bravely embarked on a mission to provide a haircut service for the disadvantaged residents of Ikoyi, who, up to the mid 80s, would always take the long road to the mainland to have a fade, many times risking their lives.

“One of the challenges posed by living in Ikoyi in 1986 was that there were no barbers anywhere near-by! One, therefore, had to go to the Mainland for a simple haircut any time one was required. I was on one of these barber trips one Sunday when I saw a ghastly accident on Eko Bridge,” Adeola said in his tribute to Aderinokun following the latter’s sad passing in 2011.

“The only thing that came to my mind was whether the victim of that accident was also on his way to the barbers! I decided we would put barbers in Ikoyi. The only person I knew that would entertain such a fanciful thought was Tayo Aderinokun. We both dipped into our pockets, and thus Finishing Touches Barbing Salon was born.”

A successful barbing salon was enough motivation for the friends, who were both on the roster of Continental Merchant Bank in 1986, to seek a license from the shot callers in Nigeria’s finance industry, for their own bank.

“For me, the idea of a commercial bank never died. I revisited it with Tayo, and told him I was now prepared to go ahead, as I felt the window of opportunity for a license was narrowing. This was in January 1989,” Adeola said in his tribute to Aderinokun.

Fola Adeola (Left) and Tayo Aderinokun (Right) pictured together.

On August 2, 1990, the pair, who were both in their 30s, received a banking license No. 58, dated August 1, 1990 and signed by the Federal Minister for Finance, Chief Olu Falae, for Guaranty Trust Bank Limited.

From that moment on, both friends, with their education and wealth of experience (Adeola had obtained a Diploma in Accounting from Yaba College of Technology in 1975 and became a Chartered Accountant in 1980 following his training with Deloitte, Haskins and Sells and D.O. Dafinone & Company, while Aderinokun had obtained a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Lagos, and much later, an MBA in International Business from the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles in 1981), set their sights on creating one of Africa’s most trusted and profitable banks.

Today, GTB, which stands tall as Adeola and Aderinokun had envisioned, boasts of over 200 branches, 17 Cash Centres, 18 e-branches, 41 GTExpress locations and more than 1165 ATMs in Nigeria. In August 2021, the bank announced its transition from a Public Listed Company (GTBank Plc) to a Limited Liability Company (Guaranty Trust Bank Limited) with Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc (GTCO Plc) as the parent company.

In Africa, the bank has expanded to Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, including the United Kingdom. The bank’s total assets are also estimated to be worth over ₦4 trillion, according to the bank’s Q1 2021 unaudited results released in April 2021.

As is often common with friends who partner to found a company but get overwhelmed by the eventual success and wealth, Adeola and Aderinokun never allowed money to tear their friendship of many years, even dreaming to once again become neighbors by owning choice buildings on the Presidential Hilltop in Abeokuta.

Aderinokun, in an interview with City People shortly after he became the bank’s MD, said “What people often forget is that Fola and I were friends well before the bank came on the scene. We’ve been friends from our high school days. So, the relationship goes beyond business.”

Although that dream, one of many between the pair, never materialised due to Aderinokun’s premature death, the pair will dance and hold their heads up high as two friends that not only played for 20 years, but created a legacy while at it. Their legacy as one of Nigeria’s most innovative and successful friends has without a doubt been fully engraved in the country’s history.