Managing Director and CEO of First Bank of Nigeria Limited, Olusegun Alebiosu, recently shared his insights on critical global issues at the 79th UN General Assembly.
Alebiosu In an interview with ARISE NEWS, identified three pressing concerns: rising poverty and inequality, climate change, and gender inequality.
He emphasised that poverty is often a symptom of lack of access and resources. “poverty in whichever form you see them, they are all symptoms of something. Most times, poverty comes from lack of access and lack of resources.”
Alebiosu further noted that to eradicate poverty, he stressed the importance of finance as a key factor of production. “To eradicate poverty, the most important factor of production is finance. So whichever way you look at it, the easiest way to go out of poverty is access to finance.”
Reflecting on the global leadership summit, he said, “In the course of the global leadership summit, I’ve been able to learn several things: innovative financing, sustainable financing, and also artificial intelligence and implications for humanity for technology, and so many other things that will shape the future.”
He added, “It’s unfortunate that most times we don’t plan for the future; we run into it, but other people are planning for the future and how the future should be shaped today.”
Alebiosu pointed out that “technology has always acted as a real differentiator across the world,” noting that “if you check in the last 10 years, money has been made in IT, and if you don’t have human resources to actually get to that level, you will fall behind.”
He observed that “the global south has not been able to do so. The global north has been able to win; apart from India, which is able to fight back, the entire global south has not been able to raise up to it, and that income gap is wide.”
Discussing his line of work, he mentioned, “What could be tackled easily is financial inclusion and how that would support poverty alleviation.”
Alebiosu highlighted that “looking at us, we have the largest agency network in Nigeria, employing many people, many of them women, and we have seen how access to finance can help people even in remote locations to advance their economic interests.”
He elaborated on the impact of financial support: “Looking at the capital synchronisation and interpretation process, if you have a cooperative society in a rural community and they are empowered with loans for them to be able to trade, if you carry out that experiment over a 10-year period, you can compare that community to the next community where they don’t have that kind of financial leverage.
The difference you are going to see would be economic development, empowerment over education, and in the other community, when they don’t have that, you will see endemic poverty which would be very glaring because commerce on its own promotes economic development.”
Alebiosu concluded, “At First Bank, we further entrench ourselves into the fabric of society. We want to live in the heart and mind of Nigerians, and that’s where First Bank supports economic development.”
Boluwatife Enome
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