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Amina Oyagbola

Board member
Amina is a board member at Afrobarometer

Biography

Amina Oyagbola is an independent director, a business leader, and a former human resources and corporate services executive at MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd. With more than 30 years’ experience, her career spans legal consulting, banking and finance, energy, and telecommunications. She is the managing consultant of AKMS Consulting Ltd. (business advisory and management consultants), senior partner of Oyagbola Chambers, and a Chevening Scholar. She obtained her undergraduate law degree from Ahmadu Bello University; her master’s in law from Trinity College, Cambridge University; and her MBA from Lancaster University. She is also an alumnus of INSEAD, London Business School, IMD, and Harvard Business School (Executive Education).

She started her career as a legal practitioner in the chambers of late Chief FRA Williams. She set up the legal department in the then Crystal Bank before moving to UBA as head legal, where she transformed the legal department. She moved on to head the Human Capital Management Division and subsequently set up and headed the Private Banking Division. She joined Shell Petroleum Development Co. to develop a new function as head of HR Strategy, Standards and Business Planning. She joined MTN Nigeria, Africa’s leading telecommunications provider in Africa and the Middle East, in 2004 as corporate services executive and corporate spokesperson.

During her 12-year tenure as a member of MTN Nigeria’s leadership team, she contributed notably to the company’s extraordinary growth and development. As corporate services executive, she had oversight over legal, regulatory, company secretariat, and corporate communications. She was pioneer director of the MTN Nigeria Foundation. She led a strategic transformation in the HR function to improve business performance as HR executive, helping MTN to become the first company in Nigeria to be accredited with the Investors in People Gold Standard in May 2015 and winning several other awards. She was also nominated as HR Person of the Year in 2015 and bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement Award by HR People magazine in 2019. She served on the MTN Group Strategy Committee and on the board of MTN Spacetel Benin, chairing its Audit and Risk Committee. In December 2015, during a period of regulatory crisis, she was called upon to lead the legal, regulatory, and corporate affairs functions in addition to her HR responsibilities.

She is a fellow and chair of the Africa Leadership Initiative – West Africa and a fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, a member of the Nigerian Bar Association and the International Bar Association, a member of CIPM, and a Chartered Fellow of CIPD UK. She is also a fellow of the Institute of Directors and a member of the Governing Council, a certified ethics officer, chair of the IoD Ethics Committee, and vice chair of the IoD Women Directors Development Committee. She is a director of the IOD Centre for Corporate Governance and a fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants.

A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusiveness, she is founder and chairperson of WISCAR (Women in Successful Careers), a not-for-profit gender empowerment and strategic mentoring and leadership initiative for professional career women.

She is married to Bayo Oyagbola, managing partner of Oyagbola Chambers, and they are blessed with three adult children.

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