At a ceremony held in Lagos, First Bank of Nigeria Limited announced the graduation of 20 successful candidates from the fourth iteration of its Senior Management Development Programme (SMDP).
The SMDP had graduated 52 people prior to the 2023 ceremony. The bank successfully graduated 23 participants in its first round, which took place in 2018, followed by 17 in 2019, and 12 in 2020.
The bank offers the intensive modular SMDP program to a select group of senior managers to principle managers. These individuals have demonstrated leadership in their respective fields and the financial institution considers them essential to its succession plan.
According to a bank statement, it is a comprehensive skill development program designed to improve the core business and leadership competencies of the bank’s elite senior management team.
In order to generate the needed talent pool, it comprises of three instructor-led modular sessions that combine classroom lectures, hands-on activities, flipped learning methodologies, and peer-to-peer dialogues.
Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, the Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank Group, said, “This programme is one of FirstBank’s key initiatives that we designed to create a dependable pool of highly skilled, favourably competitive and globally-minded senior managers. It also aims to accelerate their journey through the very demanding process of becoming outstanding leaders and management executives.
“FirstBank widely acclaim sound corporate governance, and this programme is further proof of our commitment to grooming and development. Through the SMDP, we emphasise sound leadership as the ethos and language of ‘bankwide’ conversations. This provides an empirical means of ensuring the bank’s leadership bench strength both for now and the future,” he noted.
SMDP is one of the three primary leadership programs and strategic frameworks intended to maintain performance, develop capability, and support employee empowerment from lower cadres to upper levels. The Leadership Acceleration Program and FirstBank Management Associate Program (FMAP) are the other programs.
The initiatives seek to build on the bank’s 129-year history by internally identifying and nurturing high-potential individuals who potentially assume the role of the bank’s executives in the future.
