Melie Onyejepu; Contributing To Governance Beyond Being An Appointee

Melie Onyejepu; A 17 year Banking Journey Experience (Diamond to Fidelity)

by NwanyiAbia
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The Journey of a thousand miles starts with a step in the right direction, annually banks recruit hundreds of persons to fill various positions, to distinguish yourself and become outstanding in the banking sector require more than the will power but a large ounce of intellectual capacity.

Many admired the tenacious Hon. Melie Oyejepu for his deeds while in the banking sector. He is a role model to many young bankers who desire to walk in the shoes and win the trophies he has in his coffers. A large number of others have only learnt that he was an outstanding banker who made a tremendous impact in the banking sector but are not privy of what these are.

This article will give an insider point of view of the 15 years banking experience of Hon. Onyejepu and the trail of results he left behind, to inspire persons building a career in any sector/banking sector.
Melie Onyejepu studied microbiology at the University of Nigeria, it comes as a surprise that he switched to the banking sector. We live in a changing world, the banking sector at the time was dominated by accountants, business administrators, finance managers etc, overtime studies showed that for the banks to survive, it had to move from customers seeking the bank to the bank seeking the customers.

For the bank to seek customers, those with core banking background could not function in that niche because they are fixated in their thinking, for all the other spheres of life like English, medical doctors, languages were seen to have an open mind in terms of the paradigm shift at the time. This information was obtained from a highly placed reliable source in the banking sector at the time.

There was a need at the time to offer services to suit customer needs, to tailor services to suit sectors of individuals according to their need. For instance, at the time it was only savings or current accounts, with no diversifications. You come to the bank, there are very long queues, if you have a savings account you have to go to the branch where you have the savings account to maintain it. Banking was cumbersome to the customer, it was at the wake of these that the banking sector was looking for people with ideas, people who can think out of the box to proffer solutions to issues and provide tailor made solutions.

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Melie Onyejepu started his banking career at Diamond bank in 1995 at the Onitsha main market branch. Diamond bank was the pioneer bank that started online real time banking in Nigeria, which was one of the reasons he chose the bank. He has always been particular about development and moving with evolving trends.
At the time, getting into the banking sector was for persons who are super smart, with intelligent quotients and bankers were revered because of how noble the profession was at the time. This translated into their selection process, they were not just choosing anyone, they chose people who had something to offer. Statistics have shown that whenever banks advertise for jobs nothing less than 2000 people will apply but very few will get selected.

The recruitment that brought him into the banking sector was in 1995 at the old law school, Victoria-Island, Lagos with over 1000 applicants hunting for the advertised role. There were three levels of interviews and the bank had need for only 40 persons.

At the second level interview only 10 persons were taken and at the third level, only five persons in the entire country were selected to join diamond bank and he was among the five intelligent persons who made it to the top 5. This came as a disappointment to his father who always wanted him to follow the science path, he was determined to follow his passion so he persevered.

He started his masters in microbiology at the University of Lagos alongside his banking job in Onitsha, Anambra state. At some point when it became glaring he couldn’t combine both he dropped out of University of Lagos.
Banking those days was tedious, however, the experiences shaped his future and ho
ned his skills and intellectual capability.

The training gained from the banking sector at the time will put you under multiple skills like the ability to work under pressure, the ability to proffer solutions, do multiple things at a time and produce results to issues using the best fit approach and this shows your ability to be a leader.

This has shaped his life as people who know him closely will attest to these skills in his day to day activities. The appraisals and the grading system at the time was tight, you had to meet up to required performance or get sacked outrightly.

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While at Diamond bank, he distinguished himself, in five years he was already managing Diamond banks’s 5th biggest branch- the Onitsha new market road branch. No one in his employment cadre could come that close. He proved himself beyond expectations.

He worked at diamond bank for a total of 13 years with a number of breaks which we will discuss below. At a time when people were jumping from bank to bank he stayed at diamond bank because he wanted to grow, at the time diamond bank was producing the most seasoned and experienced bankers in the country because of the quality training they gave to their staff. This made him grow faster, an advice to young bankers to remain at the bank that offer you the best platform to grow, not the bigger portfolio or paycheque.

He started his career in diamond bank in 1995, in 2003, he left for First Atlantic bank. This was because he had worked in Onitsha for long and needed to move to another city to enrich his experience but because of the results he was producing in Onitsha, Diamond bank did not want to let him go. He got an offer with First Atlantic where he was promised a better experience at the Lagos market which at the time was a huge platform for him to train.

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Lagos would offer him the experience to do a lot of syndicated and complicated loan packaging to expand his level of experience but Diamond denied him that, they wanted him to stay in onitsha to continue producing the results he gave them there.

When the offer from First Atlantic came, the Managing Director (MD) of First Atlantic Bank, Okey Nwosu, called him to come and build the bank. He negotiated with them that he wanted to go to lagos and they agreed, however, the bank said they would grant him that on the condition that he goes to their branch at Banex plaza Onitsha, which has been up for six years and accumulating massive losses. They wanted an experienced hand there to turn it around, being someone who has always had a knack for challenges he took the offer and trusted them to fulfil their side of the bargain.

He joined them and in 12 months he turned the branch to a profit making branch using his unique methods and tenacity. Asides that he opened 2 new profit making branches, one at a new market Onitsha and the other at Port-Harcourt road Onitsha. When it was time to go to Lagos, the bank insisted again that he should go to the Aba branch which was not making profit and had a lot of bad loans, they pleaded with him to go and turn it into profit and recover the bad loans and they would keep to their side of the bargain. It was another challenge, he took the offer.

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At Aba he recovered 70% non-performing loans and turned the bank into a profit making venture, opened another branch in Aba, he didn’t stay for long because, just like Onitsha, there was no huge experience to gather.
At that point, Diamond bank started bidding for him again. At the time the Idumota branch was performing below the acceptable standard and they needed an experienced hand.They learnt of his exploits with First Atlantic bank and knew he was the man for the job.

Mind you this was a time when banking was competitive, nobody will ever leave a bank and the bank will look for them. There is a pool of smart guys to pick from and they can poach from other banks yet diamond was bidding for him. He gave diamond bank his condition, which is Lagos or nothing, to his surprise, it was accepted.
He gave in, and moved to Lagos, to their(Diamond bank) Idumota branch.

*Gov. Obiano Committed To Speedy Completion Of Okpunoeze Nnewi Road – Melie Onyejepu (Photos)

He started his magic, within a year, he turned the bank into a profit making venture with no loss recorded. The Managing Director at the time was Emeka Onwuka and he started to suspect that the figures he was seeing were a fluke. He dug in and found out it was the real figures.

One thing is consistent about Melie Onyejepu, which is what he knows how to do best – Making profit out of a debt incurring venture. His expertise is turning around bad businesses.

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From Idumota he was moved to Apapa, Marina, Mamaka and he produced better results at each stop. He was made regional manager of Apapa- Marina Island Axis. It was tough moving from Onitsha and Aba, a different terrain to a high level class business area- Lagos but with doggedness he had to key in and put on his thinking cap because he had to do something different to manage the level of customers the bank had.

Just as he was concluding that, he was moved to the first flagship branch at Victoria-Island, with a high network clientele base different from Idumota or Onitsha, which came with high demand. He went there, turned the business around and opened more branches. He was exposed to loan syndication wherefore different banks had to come together to syndicate a loan, he was involved in oil and gas transactions in high levels, power etc. All these were achieved through sheer hard work.

When he was in Victoria-Island, every month he got an offer from different banks that wanted him to come and work with them, offering better pay and better positions but he stayed put with Diamond.

By the time he was done with the Victoria-Island branch, he was transferred to Edo state to create a region. The business size was not massive to carve out a region at the time, they were reporting to Port Harcourt. This created the need to develop the business size and carve out a region for Edo state.

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Melie and his regional manager at the time were sent to Benin and they started off from Sapele to Benin to Agbor, Asaba and created a powerful region by developing the business and it became a region. He needed to move back to the market in Lagos, but the bank refused.

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Then came Fidelity bank, Reginald Ihejiahii was the MD at the time. Fidelity bank had at the time super branches, which were stand alone branches with the size of a region in the books. The description was to create a super branch, bring business till it is the size of a region and make it a region.

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He needed that experience so he went to Fidelity bank in 2012 after he got a call from the MD, to work in Lagos. He was given the Ikoyi branch to manage as a region and report to the ED directly. He positioned the business properly to the point of development.

He made tremendous changes to the way the bank was operating, the bank was not operating retail based banking which is the bedrock of banking so he introduced FISBA(Fidelity Small Businesses Account) with promo and it sailed. This was where he was before the Governor of Anambra State, Willie Obiano picked him up to come to Anambra state to build it.

It will be interesting to note that all through these years he never recorded any failed project, for each bank he stepped into he produced results. Any banker that survived banking from the 1990s to this day should be applauded because the appraisal system was structured that if you fail, you fail out.
He had majority of his banking experience in Diamond bank and when Access bought over diamond bank it made him sad, it was like the pain of losing a parent. Diamond bank had shaped his life experience, however, as an experienced banker he saw it coming. He knew when the bank was starting to lag behind in the area of business alignment, sadly, he wasn’t there anymore to do what he knew how best to do.

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