Remembering Tayo Aderinokun: The goal getter who co-founded GTB with his ‘teenage friend’

“As we grew up, Tayo always shared his life’s desires with me. Two very important objectives he always emphasized. One was to be very rich, and he would add, ‘very, very rich’; the other was to be managing director of a bank. He accomplished both. I would ask him, often, what would you do with such wealth? And he would laugh, and reply, ‘wait until I get it.’”

That was Fola Adeola extolling the drive of his friend and partner, Tayo Aderinokun in a tribute following the latter’s passing in 2011.

Aderinokun had an interesting childhood. His father was a technician who worked for the Nigerian Railway Corporation. He had his basic education at Baptist Day School, Kano, from 1961 to 1966, before the Civil War forced his family to relocate to Lagos. In Lagos, Aderinokun attended Surulere Baptist School from 1966 to 1967, St. Peter’s College, Abeokuta, from 1968 to 1972 and St. Gregory’s Boys College, Lagos from 1973 to 1974.

It was during this period that he forged an unfettered friendship and brotherly bond with Adeola. They both later worked at the Continental Merchant Bank in the mid 80s before Aderinokun moved to Prime Merchant Bank where he occupied the position of an Assistant General Manager and Head, Financial Services.

“I finished from the University of Lagos and I went for my NYSC and got posted to Central Bank, through normal posting,” Aderinokun recalled his first romance with banking in an interview with City People.

He went on to say,

“immediately after that, I went abroad to get an MBA. I finished my MBA at UCLA and I came back to Nigeria. At that time, banking was it, with all the glamour. They paid better, the suits were sharper. Glamour seemed to work. That was how I started and I found out that I liked it. And it was something I did very well.”

In their 30s, the “teenage friends” decided to collaborate to found one of Africa’s biggest banks in 1990, following the success of their barbing salon, Finishing Touches Barbing Salon, in the mid 80s.

Aderinokun, born in 1955, had been convinced by an ambitious Adeola to start a commercial bank that would serve millions of people in Nigeria. That bank would be named Guaranty Trust Bank.

On August 2, 1990, Adeola and Aderinokun 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. The bank became listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 1996.

Aderinokun who held a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Lagos, and an MBA in International Business which he obtained in 1981 from the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, went on to serve as Adeola’s deputy for the 12 years the latter held the position as the bank’s Managing Director between 1990 to 2002.

“Now, we are going into a new phase which may be for me more challenging, because I have to play 2 roles. So, I have to start looking for somebody who will play either the role Fola was playing or the role I was playing before. That is really the challenge I am facing,” Aderinokun told City People shortly after he assumed the position as GTB’s new MD.

And he took on the challenge fantastically well.

When Aderinokun took over the reign as MD after his friend stepped down from the position, his experience and dedication to excellence were immediately in full glare. Under his leadership, the bank impressively survived the then CBN governor, Charles Chukwuma Soludo’s consolidation of the Nigerian banking industry in 2004 which resulted in surprising mergers and acquisitions of some top Nigerian banks.

He received many awards for his outstanding leadership, including many others for GTB.

Aderinokun held the position until June 2011 when he shockingly died from cancer aged 56. His death reverberated through the entire banking and finance industry.

In his tribute to his departed friend and partner, Adeola commended Aderinokun “for sustaining the vision, and taking the bank so much higher to a realm I know I could never have taken it to,” adding that under Aderinokun’s leadership, “the bank simply grew in leaps and bounds.”

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.

Before his death, Aderinokun founded the Day Waterman College, a co-educational boarding school for children. He left behind a wife and three children.