Profile: Meet lawyer-turned-finance guru Opeyemi Agbaje, Tinubu’s PENCOM chair
Opeyemi Agbaje is a finance, investment, and strategy professional with a multi-disciplinary career encompassing law, banking and finance, academia, and consulting in the areas of economy, policy, business strategy, and leadership, with over 40 years post-graduation experience.
Mr Agbaje is well-recognised as an expert and thought leader in business, economy, and policy.
He graduated with honours in law in 1985 from the then University of Ife and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1986. He obtained a Master’s degree in Law (LLM) from the University of Lagos in 1989, an MBA from IESE Business School in Spain in 1997, and is close to completing a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) from the Eaton Business School.
Mr Agbaje has worked in the law firm of Kola Awodein and Co., SAN, and in the legal department of First Bank of Nigeria Plc in the 1980s, before entering mainstream banking and finance as a foundation staff of GTBank in 1990, where he rose to Assistant General Manager in eight years.
Mr Agbaje enjoyed a successful banking career, rising to the position of Executive Director before voluntarily exiting the industry in 2004. Since 2004, he has worked as the founder and CEO of a successful indigenous business consultancy, RTC Advisory Services Ltd, focusing on the economy, policy, strategy, and organisational transformation.
From 1999, Opeyemi taught Business Strategy and the Environment of Business at the Lagos Business School on a part-time basis, briefly joining the full-time faculty and serving as Senior Fellow (equivalent to Associate Professor) and Head of the Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship.
He continues to teach at the Business School. Mr Agbaje is a well-known and authoritative policy commentator writing the respected ‘Economy, Polity, Society’ column on Businessday newspaper from 2006 to 2019 and producing and hosting the policy-focused TV Show, “The Policy Council” on Channels Television from 2011 to 2015.
Mr Agbaje served on the board of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund (LSSTF) for two terms, from 2011 to 2019, and briefly as CEO of the Ogun State Security Trust Fund from 2019 to 2021, before returning to the private sector.
Mr Agbaje has closely analysed the evolution of Nigeria’s pension sector from the inception of the Contributory Pension System and served as an internal consultant and Principal in charge of Asset Management and Pensions at Nigeria’s private equity firm, Capital Alliance, in 2005, as the firm evaluated opportunities in the emerging pension sector.
Mr Agbaje is married with adult children and is a Knight of John Wesley (KJW) in the Methodist Church, as well as a humble philanthropist.
