Inside the gender lopsidedness of BOI’s board, management

BOI promotes gender equity, but its leadership structure reveals a persistent underrepresentation of women in decision-making roles over the past five years.

Nigeria’s Bank of Industry (BOI) positions itself as a champion of inclusive growth—supporting women-owned businesses and gender integration.

Its thematic areas include gender inclusion, digital transformation and youth development.

“We finance and support women-owned businesses so they can grow, create jobs, and lead across sectors,” BOI stated on its website and annual reports.

Yet a closer look at the institution’s leadership structure suggests a paradox: while the bank promotes gender equity externally, women have been significantly underrepresented in its top decision-making positions over the last five years.

BOI is a development vehicle established to support projects aimed at boosting job creation, reducing poverty, and improving the socio-economic conditions of Nigerian families.

Male domination

BOI’s board currently consists of 13 members, including five executive and six non-executive directors. Of these, only two are women, representing roughly 15 per cent of the total. President Bola Tinubu appointed the board on 2 September 2024.

The women are Mabel Ndagi, executive director, Public Sector/Intervention Programmes, and Ifeoma Uz’Okpala, executive director, Large Enterprises.

Other members of the board, including the chairperson, managing director, and multiple executive and non-executive directors, are men. While Mansur Muhtar chairs the board, Olasupo Olusi has been the Managing Director/CEO since 2020.

The board’s composition is at odds with global governance recommendations. Global financial institutions, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), now aim for at least 30 per cent female representation on their boards and 40 per cent in management.

In 2012, the CBN established a regulatory mandate to foster gender diversity in the financial sector, requiring a minimum of 30 per cent female representation on the boards of commercial banks. The directive is part of a broader push for gender equality in corporate leadership.

Since then, Nigeria’s commercial banks have undergone a paradigm shift: as of 2023, eight women served as chief executive officers/managing directors in the country’s 23 commercial banks.

BOI, whose appointments are presidency-controlled, sits outside that market-driven pressure, making the gap a matter of political will and governance rather than of competence.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that Mr Tinubu had, in his ministerial appointments, jettisoned his campaign promise to ensure fair representation of women.

Just as the 2025 appointments to the NNPC board, the leadership composition in BOI contradicts Mr Tinubu’s promise to “feature women prominently” in governance, despite persistent advocacy for inclusion.

Of the 18 members of the board of directors in 2023, only two were women. The women are Mabel Nndagi, executive director, Public Sector and Intervention Programme and Toyin Adeniji, executive director, Micro-Enterprises, who retired in March of the same year. Women hold seven of 20 management-level seats.

However, in 2024, eight out of 19 management positions were held by women. These appointments demonstrate that women are somewhat present at the mid-senior level. However, most of these roles fall below the highest tier of executive decision-making.

Meanwhile, women were significantly underrepresented in decision-making roles at the bank in both 2020 and 2021.

During those years, the executive level had minimal representation of women; Toyin Adeniji, appointed in 2016, was the only woman on the 11-member board. In 2020, women accounted for only three of the 11 management personnel, a number that increased slightly to four in 2021.

In October 2024, the agency received the “Most Outstanding Performance as a Women-Friendly DFI” at The Peak Performer Africa Awards. In the same year, BOI signed a declaration of commitment to the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Code (We-Fi Code) to advance gender equality and enhance financial inclusion for women entrepreneurs across all sectors. However, the low representation of women in BOI leadership calls this commitment into question.

Why representation matters in development finance

According to its 2024 annual report, the development finance institution disbursed N510.9 billion to nearly one million beneficiaries through its lending platforms and intervention programmes.

The bank’s customers include businesses in the manufacturing, solid minerals and climate-resilient agribusiness sectors.

In her call for an increase from 30 to 40 per cent female representation in Nigeria’s banking boardrooms, Rafiat Onitiri, the chairperson of the Association of Professional Women Bankers (APWB), argued that women account for nearly 60 per cent of the banking workforce but remain underrepresented at the highest decision-making levels.

“Even achieving 40 per cent representation would be a major milestone,” Ms Onitiri said, emphasising that APWB is advocating fairness rather than numerical equality.

In its Sustainability Report, BOI’s employees raised issues related to workplace diversity and inclusion, well-being, and work-life balance, among others.

However, the agency assured that there will be “enhanced diversity and inclusion initiatives.” The development bank said it aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals— “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.”

BOI’s spokesperson, Hadiza Olaosebikan, was contacted for comment. She responded via WhatsApp that she was on leave and out of the country. However, as of the time of this report, the agency had not yet responded to the email sent several days earlier.