Distinguished Ladies & Gentlemen,

1. Today you have come in large numbers to be heard and to listen: to be head in your own words and to listen to others as they, too, narrate their respective experiences of the impact of Professor Oramah’s achievements.  It will be about the vision and the actions of an individual who has contributed enormously to our continent.  In June this year, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria described Professor Oramah as one of the few in the world, the 0.8% who combines vision and execution, for some have vision but cannot execute.  Others can execute but have little vision.  Oramah has both, and everyone who spoke in Abuja in June thought so.

2. When I joined Afreximbank in 1996, Oramah was already here and marginally older.  His energy, courage, and tenacity were very evident.  He did everything.  He was a hustler: a credit officer, a legal officer, the officer responsible for planning and strategy, the President’s P.A. and Chief Adviser etc.  He excelled at every task.  Not the cautious type, he believed everything was possible.

3. His rise to the top was as inevitable as the rising sun in the tropics.  Like me, he had the opportunity of learning from two distinguished Africans, the first two Presidents of the institution, Messrs. Christopher Edordu and Jean-Louis Ekra.

4. By the time he assumed office in 2015, Oramah's vision was clear. Building upon the solid foundations established by his predecessors, he sought to accelerate Africa's trade and socio-economic transformation, expanding the scale, and depth of the interventions and implementing some of the very ideas I once considered overambitious. This approach helped to tackle the many interconnected challenges that afflict African trade and development. This would come to be known as a "portfolio approach", the combined approach, which did not focus on trade alone.  It addressed the trade infrastructure itself, the roots, the branches, the stem.

5. Under his leadership, brick by brick, Afreximbank and its willing partners built a solid foundation for enhancing intra-African trade and industrial development.  Instruments were created to dismantle the obstacles that have hindered Africa's progress for nearly seven decades since Africa's independence. He confronted the challenges of Africa's industrial underdevelopment head-on, building on the work of those who came before him.

6. From a relatively small bank with only US$6 billion in assets in 2015, Afreximbank has rapidly grown to over US$40 billion, establishing its continental and global relevance. This growth has led to the emergence of strategically important offshoots, including FEDA, AfrexInsure, a project preparation fund, a concessionary finance window, and a highly specialised quaternary healthcare initiative –the African medical centre of excellence (AMCE)– among others.

7. Afreximbank is now one of the key multilateral financial institutions leading Africa's development efforts, particularly in implementing the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and transforming the continent's industrial landscape. Okey has helped turn the Bank into "Africa’s development supermarket" – an institution with the suite of solutions for our challenges to development.

8. Oramah has turned decades and centuries-old political wishes into tangible gains for all Africans. Those in the diaspora can now confidently trace a route back to their ancestral home in Africa and take part in the growing economic opportunities.  Those in the continent can now also join our sisters and brothers on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

9. A few days ago I told him that each day, we discover a new facet of Oramah.  You assume you have fully understood him but, like the sphinx, he renews himself into something else.  He is therefore a man of numerous facets.  Today, you will hear numerous descriptions of Oramah: Oramah the generous; the energetic; the man who enters the 15th meeting of the day at midnight with the same energy as the first meeting at 9 or 10am; the President who reads documents and leaves mark-ups everywhere, very little insightful comments, Oramah the man who is everybody’s personal example of grace, of humility, of a good father of a family; Oramah the compassionate, the provider of Covid-vaccines; the man who gave reality to the dream of Africans in the Diaspora to re-unite with their homeland; Oramah who drinks read-wine all night while preparing his statement or the form of a country financing-intervention etc.  Any attempt to describe him in a few words will fail, as you will all find out today for those who have not found out already.  Every time you think 50 speakers have exhausted all that which there is to say of Oramah, then 50 new speakers say 50 new glorious things of him.

10. I am sure that many expect me, as his one of his closest colleague of 30 years, to help summarise Oramah for them.  I long since abandoned that idea.  It is a trap.  It might mean that we stay here for not only one day, not one week or one month, but for a much longer period.  I will not fall in that trap, but the organisers of this day believed that the exercise might well be possible.  That is why we gather here today.

11. Such was his greatness that the Russians were the first to recognise it all – perhaps by reason of their sophisticated satellites.  And so H.E. President Vladimir Putin awarded Oramah the great honour of the Friendship of Russia; then followed the Cameroonians with the knight of the national Order of Valour; then the Congolese of Brazzaville made him a high-officer of their national Order of Merit, then the Republic of Chad made him a Commander, and Nigeria, his homeland, crowned it all with the Grand-Commander, but not before Gabon and Guinea-Bissau had, like Chad, also made him a Commander.

12. Accolades, he has accumulated, but in Afreximbank, that by which we refer to him the most is the one conferred by a distinguished group of men, described as “men of Nigeria Timber and Calibre”.  This was around Onitsha.  The title he was awarded in Onitsha is described as “Dikeora”, which means “the Great Man of the People”.  Anyone who knows the tradition of the people around Onitsha will know that “the Great Man” is a pseudonym for “a great masquerade”.  No one can pretend to know it, let alone fully apprehend its ways.

13. GCON DIKEORA, you are truly the "great man of the people" the Great Masquerade. Your colleagues at Afreximbank and the two billion people in Global Africa cannot thank you enough for the selflessness with which you executed your mandate, like the Great Masquerade, boldly, fearlessly, having only the interest of your continent, in mind, upholding the dignity of the African, of Global Africans.  You have instilled in us a can-do spirit, the courage to continue challenging the status quo, to challenge the orthodoxy that preaches that nothing good can come out of our continent.  As you have always emphasised, it is only through "constructive disruption" that Africa can secure a footing on the world stage. As we embark on a new chapter for the Bank, we aim to build on the strong foundation you have laid and be guided by the values you have instilled.

So, my brother, DIKEORA, the Masquerade of development work, do not be late to the office on Monday at 10am!

14. We have created a catalogue of the Bank's decade-long journey with you into a Coffee Table Book. This book symbolises the unforgettable memory of the transformation you brought to the Bank and a gentle reminder to us all of what we can achieve over the next decade.

George Elombi

Friday, 24th October 2025