The Chief Executive Officer of Access Holdings, Herbert Wigwe, and his wife, Chizoba, have died after a helicopter carrying the couple and four others crashed in California on Friday night, February 9, 2024.
According to reports, the helicopter was headed to Las Vegas when it crashed near boulder City, which is between Nevada and California on Friday night.
According to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s department, the helicopter took off from Palm Springs Airport around 8.45pm and was heading to Las Vegas when it crashed around
10pm.
The bank executive, his wife, and their son were said to be onboard the ill-fated helicopter.
The group chairman of the Nigerian Export Group, Abimbola Ogunbanjo, is also said to have been in the helicopter.
Wigwe, who was 57, had led Access Bank as CEO since 2014, having taken co-ownership of the bank with his partner Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede in 2002.
He spearheaded an Africa expansion drive that has involved taking majority stakes in or outright acquisitions of banks in Kenya, South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Mozambique. Access Bank’s acquisition of a competitor in 2019 has seen it become Nigeria’s largest bank by total assets. Wigwe told Semafor Africa in November the bank was close to finalizing a regulatory process to launch its first full banking service in Asia in the first quarter of 2024.
Beyond banking, Wigwe’s other major interest was in higher education. His Wigwe University, located in the oil-producing Rivers state in southern Nigeria, is set to take off with its inaugural academic session later this year. The project is estimated to cost $500 million and plans to enroll 10,000 students over the next five years.
