(Bloomberg) -- Access Bank, Nigeria’s biggest lender by assets, confirmed the death of its co-founder and chief executive after a helicopter he was flying in crashed late Friday in the California desert.

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Herbert Wigwe, 57, died alongside his wife and son, the bank said in a statement released on Sunday. His death was mourned by Nigerians led by President Bola Tinubu and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization.

“The Access family has suffered a major loss with the passing of Dr. Wigwe, who was a great friend and fine gentleman,” Abubakar Jimoh, chairman of Access Holdings, said in a statement to the Nigerian Stock Exchange. “In line with the company’s policy, the board will soon announce the appointment of an acting group chief executive officer, even as we remain confident that the Access Group will build further on Dr. Wigwe’s legacy of growth and operational excellence.”

The helicopter that went down on Saturday was carrying six people, including Abimbola Ogunbanjo, 61, president of the National Council of the Nigeria Stock Exchange from 2017 to 2021, who also served as the group chairman of the Nigerian Exchange Group Plc from 2021 to 2022. His death was confirmed by a family member in Lagos.

The Airbus Helicopters EC-130 crashed at about 10 p.m. on Friday with six people on board, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is in charge of the investigation.

The crash site was near Halloran Springs in the Mojave Desert, close to California’s border with Nevada. The chopper was headed to Boulder City, Nevada, south of Las Vegas, local ABC affiliate KABC reported on Saturday without saying where it got the information.

No survivors were located, the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner Department said in an emailed statement on Saturday.



Wigwe started his professional career with Coopers & Lybrand Associates, an international firm of chartered accountants, before spending a decade at Guaranty Trust Bank. In 2004 he co-engineered the acquisition of local lender Access Bank, where he assumed the post of deputy managing director and eventually became CEO in January 2014.

The banking executive told Bloomberg News in November that he was bankrolling a new, $500 million university outside the southern city of Port Harcourt to help students hone the skills needed for the finance and technology industries in Africa’s most-populous nation.

Wigwe said he planned to teach and mentor students and engage some of the country’s prominent entrepreneurs, including billionaire Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, to teach at the university.

Read more: Banking Tycoon Invests in New $500 Million University in Nigeria

“To get the next set of leaders in banking, you need to create the right education for them,” Wigwe said from his office in the 14-story Access Bank headquarters, overlooking the Lagos lagoon.

Ogunbanjo started his banking career at Chase Manhattan Bank Nigeria in 1985 before he re-qualified as a legal practitioner and joined the law firm of Chris Ogunbanjo & Co in 1990, where he held the position of managing partner until his death, according to a biography from his firm.

He joined the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2011 and served in various capacities, including vice-president, according to his LinkedIn biography.

Ogunbanjo was the former vice chairman of the Commercial Law and Taxation Committee of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and acted as special Nigerian counsel to the London and Paris clubs in connection with the refinancing and rescheduling agreements made between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and International Creditors Banks.

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