the Diamond banker who changed Nigerian finance

Pascal Dozie, who died on April 8 aged 85, lived a remarkable life in the brightness of innovation and the shadow of war.

He could see the future and, with the founding of Diamond Bank, changed Nigerian banking forever.

Two ideas were the pillars of his fortune.

The first was born on a day when Dozie travelled to Lagos on the rough and dusty road leading from the villages where he grew up in Eastern Nigeria. He saw thousands of traders looking over their shoulders with bundles of cash on the way to buy their wares in Lagos; they took a huge risk among the many thieves and robbers.

Dozie wondered whether money could be sent a safer way and he began looking into bringing electronic transfers to Nigeria.

The result was the establishment of Diamond Bank, in 1991.

Now a household name, it may have changed Nigerian banking permanently, but it wasn’t easy to get if off the ground. In the conservative Nigerian market, most businesses saw any bank less than three years old as a mere fly-by-night.  The tiny bank staff who set up the bank spent most of their day trying to persuade businesses to deposit their money.

It all began in a tiny third floor office in Victoria Island in Lagos, with 20 staff and a mere $5m in cash. Diamond Bank shook off early scepticism to eventually serve 16 million customers.

In 2019, a $235m merger was brokered with Access Bank to create the biggest bank in Africa, with 29 million customers. The deal led to the exit of his son Uzoma Dozie as CEO – he now heads Sparkle, a digital banking venture.

Telecoms boom

He also played a major part in opening up one of the biggest, most lucrative markets in West Africa. In 1998, South African cell phone outfit MTN approached Dozie to find investors for a brand new network in West Africa. Dozie set off on a massive journey from Nigeria to London and the United States to sell the idea of investing in a new network. Nearly all turned him down, casting rare self-doubt in his mind.

“It was very disappointing. You have a good project and you are turned down. You start to question yourself and your own decision making.”

Dozie managed to raise only 20% of the capital he needed. Somehow, MTN managed to raise the rest from other sources.

The rest is history. By 2016, MTN had 60 million subscribers, in Nigeria alone.

“Now I run into those same investors who tell me they wished they had invested when I asked them. I wish I had done it myself! We would have enjoyed returns of 20 times out money!” he said a couple of years later.

On May 16, 2001, he made the first call on the MTN network, a historic moment in Nigeria’s telecommunications journey.

Dozie would go on to serve as chairman of MTN Nigeria from 2001 to 2019, and would exit following the firm’s listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

“A pioneer, statesman, and titan of industry, Dozie played a pivotal role in the emergence of mobile telephony in Nigeria and in shaping the MTN Nigeria story. He brought insight, experience, and leadership at a time when bold vision was essential,” the firm said in tribute.

Triumph and tragedy

Pascal Dozie was born on April 9 1939, the son of a court interpreter near Owerri, Imo State, in eastern Nigeria. His was a traditional upbringing.

“We did not have many facilities and we had the village set up. If you were hungry they would feed you. If your neighbour caught you doing something wrong they would punish you. When your parents found out, they would talk to the neighbour to make sure you had received a proper spanking!”

This discipline and culture of his people never left him. Igbo culture, for Dozie, was like a shell to a tortoise. In the years he made his many millions, amid the bright lights of Lagos, he would often return to the village and tell stories and sing Igbo songs to his children by the fireside.

In the hopeful early days of Nigerian independence, in the 1960s, the youngest and brightest from villages were sent overseas, to study, ready to help their country build a better future.

Dozie was one of them. He earned a scholarship to study economics at the London School of Economics. It was there that the young Dozie, studying money supply and economic growth,  sat  in the same class as a scruffy, long haired Englishman, preoccupied by Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. It was Mick Jagger who famously gave up the LSE for R n’ B with the Rolling Stones.

“We thought Mick was different,” smiles Dozie with his trademark deadpan wit, ”We were very conservative and he had long hair. As an African coming from Nigeria, we didn’t understand him. It went against the grain for me. In the village where I grew up you only play music if you have nothing else to do.”

The young Dozie had plenty to do when he graduated with a master’s degree in administration from the City University in London. First he joined the many African graduates working at the economic planning forum of NEDO in London.

In these years the pull of home was strong, but the pain of home was stronger.

The separatist Biafran war broke out in 1967 and raged until 1970; Dozie’s family was caught right in the middle. The pain in Dozie’s face was acute he talked about the era. There were 100,000 military casualties and up to two million people died of starvation.

“It was a very traumatic period for us. Bombs were going off everywhere and you didn’t know what the truth was. People were being shunted all over the place; at times I didn’t know where my own mother was.” 

Dozie took a job in Uganda while he waited for peace and the return home. He finally made it back in September 1971, to look after his mother who was suffering from ill health.

When he got back to Lagos he founded his first business, the African Development Consulting Group.

From there, he made the contacts and raised the capital which would eventually prove crucial to the launch of Diamond Bank, which went on to be one of the biggest names in Nigerian retail banking.

The wit and wisdom of a wealth creator

Dozie was a softly spoken man unafraid to speak his mind. He thought Nigeria could be a goldmine for entrepreneurs, if only the country could fix its huge infrastructure gaps and keep the government at arms-length from business.

“This is the only country in the world where people ask what business you are in and the reply is: Politics!”

I shall never forget the afternoon I met the grand old man of West African business.

We sped through the Lagos streets, juddering across the potholes, swerving past battered old cars. Twice we were pulled over by traffic police who, with jabbing fingers, unleashed a tirade of language strong enough to make a seasoned journalist blush.

When I shook Dozie’s hand on the way into the office, I regaled the story. He said with a smile: “Welcome to Lagos, the only city in the world that exercises all the faculties known to man!”

We both laughed; that was the wit and wisdom of one of Nigeria’s greatest wealth creators.

Richer and more flamboyant billionaires will emerge from Nigeria; but few will be as erudite, shrewd and dignified.