Our attention has been drawn to a story tagged: Aftermath of President Jonathan’s Failed Re-election Bid: Skye Bank Chairman, Tunde Ayeni in Fresh Mess on some online sites. We are quite surprised at this story, both because it is completely false and malicious, and because no effort was made to contact the Bank to confirm and or clarify the allegations before its publication, contrary to all known professional rules and ethics of journalism. For the avoidance of doubt, Skye Bank is a public limited liability company owned by over 450,000 diverse shareholders, with sound corporate governance structures and practice. The Bank has a full complement of 13 Directors, comprising 9 Non – Executive Directors, two of whom are Independent Directors, including a former Deputy Governor of the CBN. Dr. Olatunde Ayeni is a NON-EXECUTIVE Chairman of the Bank. He is neither involved in the management of the Bank, nor does the governance structure and practise of the Bank give room for any director to use the Bank’s funds for personal purposes.
Equally important is the fact that Dr. Olatunde Ayeni is a private business man who has business interests in various areas of the economy including aviation, maritime, real estate, construction, financial services, ICT and the oil and gas sectors amongst others. He has had business interests in many of these areas before becoming the Chairman of Skye Bank. He is also Chairman of several other companies, both quoted and unquoted. He therefore has both business and personal relationships outside of Skye Bank. Dr. Ayeni is not a politician, though by reason of his network, he has relationships with various people, some of who are technocrats, corporate players, and persons holding political offices across various political parties and at various levels. As a private citizen, Dr. Ayeni is well within his right to utilise his personal resources at his discretion. Skye Bank did not support, contribute or fund any political party, and neither did it directly or indirectly support Dr. Ayeni to contribute to, support or fund any political party.
The allegation in the story is totally untrue and baseless. There are no concerns whatsoever about the safety of shareholders’ investment whether by shareholders, or by the Bank’s very keen regulatory overseers including the CBN and SEC. The Bank continues to maintain its sound corporate governance and risk management practises that continues to ensure its strength and growth, and recently earned it the coveted ‘Best Bank in Risk Management’ Award by Conrad Clark in Association with Risk Management Institute of UK and BusinessDay.