Hakeem Belo-Osagie: From The Boardroom To The Classroom

The notice came innocently enough last week from LinkedIn – ‘Hakeem is celebrating 3 years at Harvard Business School’, with the usual options to send congratulatory message. I responded: “Congrats on your 3rd anniversary at Harvard! Hope you are enjoying it. Cheers!”

The LinkedIn notice reminded me that when we met in his Ikoyi home in August, he had promised to tell me about his experience as a teacher in Harvard these last few years.

His LinkedIn profile lists him as Senior Lecturer, Business Administration. He has been doing this since September 2019 and it must be a big change from being a Board Chairman to a Classroom teacher at Harvard, where he teaches the Special Intensive Course on Business in Africa for the MBA programme.

You all know him as a businessman. Big business. You name the sector and he has been there one time or another in his 67 years on planet earth. Public and private sectors. Chairman of UBA from the 90s into the new millennium. Chairman of Etisalat Nigeria, the Telecomms giant. Founder of FSDH Group and Merchant Bank, and CTIC before then. He’s been into oil and gas before then too, even as special assistant to Nigeria’s Oil Adviser Dikko in the 80s. He was also special assistant to late Petroleum Minister Rilwan Lukman.

But ask him what he is doing now and he will just tell you, ‘I am teaching at Harvard’. Simple!

Keem is the son of late Professor Tiamiyu Belo-Osagie, renowned gynaecologist who was personal physician to the families of former Nigerian heads of state and a well respected mentor whom many of us celebrate his posthumous birthday every 1st of October. With a Professor as a father, it shouldn’t be too far-fetched to see Keem towing the professorship line, should it? That remains to be seen.

We know that he is still chairman and member of several boards; but there must be a wide gulf between dealing with adult members of boards (sometimes, of the old school) and now relating with much younger men and women of a different generation.

From his past profile, Keem or HBO, as he is fondly called by friends, has not been a teacher in any form. But there is no doubt that he has enjoyed and is enjoying teaching at Harvard.

Harvard is not new to him though, having been a student there himself years earlier. But now as a senior citizen at 67, he should also be learning daily and gaining a thing or two from the young generation in the MBA class he is teaching, that can also serve his numerous business interests, locally and internationally.

UBA plc, where he was chairman is easily still one of the top banks in Nigeria and indeed Africa. He did a lot of things there then, bringing together a team of both the old and new – ‘whiz kids’ they were tagged – that was second to none in any other similar organisation and the blend was enough to scare others into replicating the same strategy. With a board of such heavyweights as Igwe Alex Nwokedi, Nuhu Bamalli, Isaiah Gowon, Kayode Sofola, Amah Iwuagwu, and others, the bank had nowhere else to go but up. The management was even more intimidating, tapped from the best in the top banks who went on later from the UBA School to become MDs, DGs and Commissioners in other banks/government agencies or run top businesses and corporations. Just get a load of this – Henry Imasekha, Abba Kyari, Suzzane Iroche, Tomi Somefun, Nigel Lardner, Ben Akabueze, Aliyu Dikko, Ex-CBN Governor/Kano Emir Lamido Sanusi, Angela Etomi, Carol Anyanwu, Peju Adebajo, Alex Okoh, Alex Otti, Godwin Ize-Iyamu, Reginald Ihejiahi, Mike Ajukwu, Ahmed Jelani, Arnold Ekpe, Offong Ambah, Louis Edozien, Bayo Adeleke, current Nigerian High Commissioner to Canada Adeyinka Asekun, Sam Egube, AJ Bello, Leke Ogunlewe – it’s a long list.

Keem fought many battles then – government, unions, shareholders associations, employees, even the media; obviously his lessons from those ‘battles’ will form case studies for his Harvard graduate students and their ideas may also teach him a thing or two in the multiple businesses he is still running, including as Chairman of the Board of FSDH Holding Company, since September 2019.

FSDH holding Company is a financial services holding company which includes among its holdings, a merchant bank, an asset management company, a pension fund administration and a securities trading company.

He is Expert Global Advisor and International Advisory Board Member at Equinor; International Advisory Board Member at The Brookings Institution; Global Advisory Board Member on the Council on Foreign Relations; Chairman of the Board, Chocolate City Music/Warner Music; Chairman, Metis Capital Partners; Chairman, Duval Properties Limited. You can see that his portfolio is still quite full.

Recall that he was Chairman of the Board, Etisalat Nigeria from February 2007 to June 2017 after he left UBA, where he had spent 10 years in the UBA Group as Chairman of the Board from January 1997 to January 2004 and as Vice-Chairman from January 1994 to January 1997.

Keem has an MBA, from Harvard Business School (1978 – 1980) and Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Cambridge (1976 – 1978). He is a member of the Nigerian Bar. His qualifications also include an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from University of Oxford from 1973 to 1976. With education at Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford, what more do you expect?

As a philanthropist, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, along with his wife, Myma are known to give to several causes which they do not make much noise about.

But what next after teaching at Harvard? I am sure Keem will tell us when the time is right.

 

Epa Ogie Eboigbe, veteran journalist, broadcaster and public affairs specialist, writes on, and analyses current and historical issues with a ‘wise pen’.

 

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