Olusegun Alebiosu leads one of Nigeria’s oldest and most systemically important financial institutions. Appointed Chief Executive of First Bank of Nigeria in 2024, he took charge of a bank founded well over a century ago and central to the country’s economic life, bringing nearly three decades of experience and a reputation as one of the sector’s most rigorous risk professionals.
His ascent to the top job came from within. He joined FirstBank in 2016 as Group Executive and Chief Risk Officer, later serving as Executive Director for risk and compliance, before being appointed acting Managing Director and then substantive Chief Executive. That grounding in risk, the discipline at the heart of sound banking, has shaped his measured, stability-first leadership.
His career spans the breadth of African finance. Beginning in 1991 at the former Oceanic Bank, he served as Chief Risk Officer at Coronation Merchant Bank, Chief Credit Risk Officer at the African Development Bank, and Group Head of Credit Policy at United Bank for Africa. His education is equally wide-ranging: degrees from the University of Lagos, a Master’s in Development Studies from the London School of Economics, and the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School, where he is an alumnus of both the business and Kennedy schools. Disciplined and internationally schooled, Alebiosu steers FirstBank at a moment of intense competition and reform, a leader whose instinct for prudence is matched by a clear ambition to renew a national institution.
