Report has it that the immediate former Managing Director of Fidelity Bank, Nnamdi Okonkwo and the present MD/CEO of the bank, Ms. Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe, are at loggerheads with each other, a situation dragging the financial institution into the mud.
It was gathered that t Onyeali-Ikpe ordered an investigation into the several activities of Okonkwo, as the head of the bank.
Inside sources within the bank disclosed that Onyeali-Ikpe, who resumed as the bank MD/CEO in January 2021, felt compelled to investigate her predecessor’s activities following a pool of information at her disposal upon resumption.
According to sources, Onyeali-Ikpe, who was believed not to be Okonkwo’s initial choice to succeed him, later learnt her former boss wasn’t favourably disposed to her choice as MD and even went about dissuading the board somewhat to instead pick his own preferred choice or so it seemed.
But the board thought otherwise and made Onyeali-Ikpe their choice.
Upon her ascension as Fidelity Bank’s Chief Executive Officer on January 1, 2021, to solidify her position at the helms of affair and to show she’s not a pushover of any sort, Onyeali-Ikpe, it was however gathered, spearheaded an investigation in order to verify there were no abnormalities in the system.
Close sources said she ordered all consultants hired under Okonkwo to be investigated and this led to most of the bank’s top executives believed to be Okonkwo’s loyalists quickly resigning from their positions.
While our source could not explain the reasons for the mass resignation, there were silent insinuations that Onyeali-Ikpe is actually bent on cleaning out of Fidelity Bank those she perceives or suspects to have been the loyalists of the former MD/CEO, and who she felt could undermine her or probably be spies.
“So the supposedly smart ones who expected that they could be touched negatively by the ongoing war or purge, quickly began to do the needful by resigning before they are smoked out unceremoniously,” a source said.
It was gathered that Okonkwo has been rattled by Onyeali-Ikpe’s audacity to probe his tenure as the bank’s helmsman.
It will be recalled that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, had previously arrested and prosecuting Okonkwo and a certain Fidelity Bank staff for allegedly receiving $115 million from former Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, during the run-up to the 2015 Presidential election.
The anti-graft agency had preferred money laundering allegations against Alison-Madueke and Okonkwo after it alleged that the controversial female ex-minister invited the former Fidelity Bank Chief to help her handle some cash, which was eventually disbursed to some electoral officials and organisations.
