Shettima Hails Zenith Bank For Culture Of Innovation, Integrity 

…Hils founder, Ovia, for weaving technology into Nigerian, global finance DNA

Vice President Kashim Shettima has hailed Zenith Bank, one of Nigeria’s largest financial institutions, for instilling a culture of innovation and inbred integrity into Nigeria’s financial standards.

According to him, beyond performing excellently in guarding Nigeria’s wealth, Zenith has also nurtured the nation’s dreams, sealing the bank’s status as Nigeria’s largest bank by Tier-One capital.

According to his spokesman Stanley Nkwocha, while speaking in the early hours of Saturday in Lagos during the 35th Anniversary of Zenith Bank, Shettima observed that from July 1990, when the bank was born in Nigeria’s banking sector, it was quite glaring that “a motion was set in place for a revolution in the nation’s corporate culture.”

The great strides the bank has made, he noted, were the cumulative effects of what has earned it the prize as the nation’s  number one bank, a position it has retained for 16 consecutive years, “making it a benchmark in the annals of African enterprise.”

Extolling the bank’s innovation and integrity, Shettima said, “And so, as we gather to celebrate Zenith Bank at thirty-five, we are honouring a culture—a culture where innovation is instinct, where integrity is non-negotiable, and where service to humanity is as important as service to shareholders.

“On behalf of the Government and people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I salute Zenith Bank, I honour Mr. Jim Ovia, and I commend Dame Adaora Umeoji.

“May the next thirty-five years find you still breaking barriers, still setting standards, and still proving that in Nigeria, greatness is not an exception—it is an expectation.”

The Vice President, who noted that he was also attending Zenith Bank’s 35th anniversary as “a proud alumnus” of the bank, said while some financial institutions exist mainly to expand their profit margins year after year, there are other banks that write history.

“I know the difference because I was bred in this system, and I know that Zenith Bank belongs to a class of its own. It is a family that has stood together.

“A family that thinks together. A family that builds together. A family that grows together. A family that celebrates each other’s victories and endures each other’s trials.

“A family bound not solely by contracts and capital, but by the foresight that tomorrow arrives heavy with promise. For thirty-five years, this Bank has opened more than branches across the world; it has opened possibilities,” he maintained.

He lauded the Chairman/Founder of Zenith Bank, Chief Jim Ovia, describing him as a “master of foresight, the architect of dreams, the conjurer of possibilities, the alchemist who turns vision into gold a magician whose wand is wisdom, whose stage is the future, and whose art is the transformation of an industry.”

The Vice President said Ovia’s genius has never been in doubt, having had the privilege of working under his watch during the period he worked as a banker.

He continued: “He (Chief Ovia) saw the future of banking when most of us were still grappling with its present. Long before technology became the bloodstream of global finance, Jim Ovia had already woven it into the DNA of Nigerian banking.

“He introduced innovation not as a fashion but as a philosophy, placing Zenith Bank on a path where excellence is not an ambition but a standard. Yet his true signature is not only on the balance sheet. For Mr. Jim Ovia, the people make an institution.”

Shettima also praised Zenith Bank’s culture of continuity, which eventually placed the leadership mantle on its first female Group Managing Director/CEO, Dr. Adaora Umeoji, saying the bank’s story was a relay of “baton passed with trust and received with grace.

“Today, that baton rests in the capable hands of Dame (Dr.) Adaora Umeoji, the first woman to lead this Bank in its distinguished history.