Honour That Humbles The Recipient

Pedro: You can't buy experience with money

Let us hear it all from the horse mouth....Even from Femi Pedro himself. The ex MD/CEO of First Atlantic Bank.

"On Thursday, 1st of March, 2018, I was Inaugurated as the Chairman, Board of Directors of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) in Abuja, Nigeria.

I thank President Muhammadu Buhari for the confidence and faith reposed in me to deliver on this assignment. 

I am particularly looking forward to this task because I have always had a passion for small businesses. The concept of growing a small business by tapping into the potential of Nigerian entrepreneurship, as well as seeing a small idea become a generation-changing business venture is something I always enjoyed experiencing in my time in the private sector. 

I am looking forward to playing a small part in helping small and medium scale businesses in Nigeria harness their true potential. God bless you all"

Our take at Soji Graphics:-
In one of our last posts titled "The Uninvited Guest" where the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in a random chat with his wife on the night of Indepence Day on October 1, 1960 where he spoke about sidelining competence to engage the non incompetent, after observing with dismay the shoddy arrangements of the independence day ceremony on that fateful night of October 1, 1960. 
Chief Awolowo spoke about the beauty of considering competence in handing an assignment to someone and harzard and the disaster of doing vice versa. 
Even the tragedy of putting square pegs in round holes, and round pegs in square holes that has bedeviled this nation since independence.

But with this humbling appointment, we strongly believe that the powers that be got it right this time. 
This time they got it right, by assigning a competent hand, who have seen it all in the banking and finance industry, to handle a crucial assignment like this, even at this crucial period of the nation. Someone who rose through the ranks, all the way from the management cadre to executive level, in a career very relevant to SMEs - the banking industry.

An ilk of Femi, groomed and mentored by the legendary merchant banking entrepreneur, even the first to take the bull of indigenous banking in Nigeria by the horns - Otunba Subomi Balogun himself. Yea, the founder of the then First City Merchant Bank, now First City Monument Bank, when the bank went retail but still want to retain the the abbreviated brand and logo - FCMB.
Yet our charge to Pedro is: Let him see this honour as a call to service to his fatherland. Not an opportunity to oil or lubricate any political machinery, by way of staging a come back to any form of political revelance, so as they say. When he is already a relevant man. Otherwise had he not been relevant, another man would have been considered in his place.