On Monday, February 9, 2025, Premium Times, one of Nigeria’s well-known online publications, published a piece which left me wondering whether it was really from the same platform I have always respected.
Writing ostensibly in response to a piece on Cardoso’s first eleven, Premium Times published a piece that was, to put it mildly, heavy on conjecture.
The “exclusive” focused on the appointment of consultants and advisers at the CBN, but while I read to see whether they were going to present evidence of incompetence or lack of qualification with regard to the profiles in the article they were responding to, the piece appeared to read like an attack on the female consultants and advisers.
Premium Times went as far as calling them “Cardoso Women”. This was upsetting and I found it to be a blatant display of sexism because the fact remains that these women are not just names on a page – they are our daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, aunties, and nieces, quietly getting the work done. They are human beings, and this is not how to treat our own.
As a woman who has faced her own share of sexism, I found the publication’s approach to be a reflection of the patriarchy that still grips certain quarters of Nigerian society. Women cannot be intelligent, accomplished, and competent – without having to justify their existence.
The piece completely ignored the qualifications and experience of these women. It dispensed largely with balance, which is a key journalism tenet. There was no mention of their qualifications or experience; no source was named in the exclusive piece about three globally recognized, highly competent, well-qualified go-getters with over 80 years of cognate experience between them.
I was worried because this isn’t the first time Nigerian women have been dragged simply for being excellent. We saw it with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who faced relentless attacks when she served as Minister of Finance. Despite her impeccable credentials – Harvard, MIT, World Bank – critics ignored her work and resorted to personal attacks.
It happened to Dora Akunyili of blessed memory, who revolutionized NAFDAC, saved countless lives by taking on counterfeit drug barons, and was still vilified by vested interests. There is also the case of Arunma Oteh, who was put through the misogynistic wringer.
That same script seems to be playing out again because whenever a woman steps up, instead of engaging with her ideas, detractors throw a low blow but history vindicated Okonjo-Iweala, Akunyili and Oteh – and it will do the same for these brilliant women at the CBN.
The piece in quoting an unnamed source at the CBN wrote that “there are 29 experienced directors, 170 deputy directors, and over 400 PhD holders in CBN. There is no need to domicile consultants in the bank.”
This provides a perfect segue into the profiles of these three amazons.
Nkiru Balonwu and Daphne Oterie Dafinone are both PhD holders so let’s make that 402 PhD holders at the CBN. The more, they say, the merrier. In a country where many call themselves doctors without the requisite scholarship or qualifications, the assumption was that the publication was going to call their qualifications or experience into question, but the focus was largely on how much they are paid the curious thing was that while the piece focused on the three women, it was eerily silent on their male colleagues.
It is curious but not surprising that the piece chose to ignore the men. Why? Because in many minds, a man’s competence is assumed, but a woman’s must always be defended.
Is this not sexism and patriarchy at work? It is also intriguing that the online platform published this piece at a time when the reforms at the CBN are bearing fruit. The naira is stabilizing, the FXCode has brought sanity and banished speculation in the FX market and foreign portfolio investors are falling over themselves to invest in Nigeria.
This seems to me like an unnecessary distraction.
Dr. Dafinone comes from a family which has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as producing the highest number of Chartered Accountants in the whole wide world. She is by no chance an upstart.
Daphne Dafinone has a PhD in Internal Audit & Corporate Governance from City University, London. Before her PhD, she had obtained an MSc in Internal Audit & Management Finance from the same university after graduating with a BA (Hons) in Economics degree from the University of Manchester in 1987.
Her first job, verifiable from publicly available records, was at KPMG Peat Marwic MClintock Chartered Accountants in the United Kingdom. It is a globally recognized fact that KPMG only hires the best.
Before coming to the CBN consultancy, Dr. Dafinone rose to the position of Chief Operating Officer of Crowe Dafinone which makes her a bonafide owner-manager.
The publication also alluded to the fact that she is a board member of NIRSAL but the piece forgot to mention that Dr. Dafinone was audit committee chair on the board of CitiBank Nigeria. As we say in Naija: na where NIRSAL take reach Citibank?
With a focus on development finance and governance at the CBN, Dr. Dafinone has brought over 35 years of experience in corporate governance, due diligence, corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, and debt restructuring to her role.
Change always invites pushback!
Ms. Shola Phillips is not just a Special Adviser to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria on Compliance & Risk. She is a globally renowned and well-respected Compliance and Risk expert.
According to her profile, Ms. Phillips “is leading the design and implementation of a new department with the mandate to improve compliance within the Bank and across the Nigerian Banking industry by spearheading initiatives that foster good governance and ethical conduct via the introduction of accountability measures.”
Let us ask a quick question: is Shola Phillips qualified to be an adviser to the CBN governor? Where do we start from? One: Let us consider her 25 years of experience as a senior compliance director across the wholesale and retail sectors of the financial service industry; Two: let us pay attention to her regulatory knowledge spanning multiple dynamic and complex jurisdictions – the UK, Europe, United Arab Emirates, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Japan, United States of America, and multiple jurisdictions in Africa. Three: let us ponder on her education at the University of Reading, where she graduated with a degree in Economics and the Cardiff Business School in Wales where she bagged her MBA.
Shola is not a local champion, no sir! Starting her career at home as a Corporate Finance associate at Prudent Merchant Bank Limited she set out for world domination and has worked at Handelsbanken Private Bank, Mizuho Corporate Bank, Ruffer LLP, Rothschilds, and the Permal Group.
She was Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Officer for Citibank Nigeria Limited before going ahead to serve as Global Functions Regional Compliance Director for the Europe Middle East & Africa region at Citigroup and then the Global Head of Compliance for Risk Management at Citigroup, Inc.
Talk about global domination
Last time I checked, we have only two Nigerian born lawyers who are Senior Advocates of Nigeria and Queen Counsels now Kings Counsel. They are Professor Fidelis Oditah and Professor Oba Nsugbe what that means is that Oditah and Nsugbe are at the top in two jurisdictions; Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
What have they got to do with the CBN? Well, let us talk about Dr. Nkiru Balonwu. Like Dafinone, Balonwu comes from a family of renowned lawyers and her ambition, as she wrote in a recent, LinkedIn post was to rise all the way to the Supreme Court.
But she pivoted first to academia and then business and consulting. A consummate scholar, she earned her first degree in Law from the University of Manchester, her Master’s from University College London and then a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.
She has been called to the bar in England, Nigeria, and New York – a feat any lawyer will tell you is incredibly difficult. Passing just one bar exam is challenging; passing three, across different legal systems, is an achievement that demands extraordinary intellectual rigor.
When Dr. Balonwu returned to Nigeria she was hired at the University of Lagos where she was the inaugural, meaning FIRST EVER, lecturer in Gender & Law at Unilag. She was Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School from 2022-2023. Her focus was on the role of the private sector in influencing and constructing gender policy in Africa.
While still in her 30s, Dr. Nkiru Balonwu was appointed CEO of Spinlet, then Africa’s largest music streaming platform—long before Spotify, Tidal, or Deezer entered the continent. She is the Founder & Creative Director of the Africa Soft Power Group, which includes African Women on Board, ASP Global, and RDF Strategies. This influential think tank and advisory group has collaborated with global powerhouses like Facebook, MTN Nigeria, MTN Benin, Ford Foundation, Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), Africa Investment Forum (AIF), Afreximbank, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), and Mastercard Foundation, among many others.
Beyond consulting, Balonwu is a respected board member of leading institutions such as BusinessDay (Nigeria’s premier business and financial newspaper), the International Federation of Periodical Publishers (FIPP), Africa Prosperity Network, and Asaase Broadcasting Company Limited in Ghana. She also serves as Chairperson of the Sickle Cell Aid Foundation (SCAF).
Now, let us talk about money and compensation which was the main focus of the piece. A consultant from McKinsey, Bain, or Accenture bills hundreds of thousands of dollars for the same strategic work these women are doing. PwC, KPMG, and Deloitte charge top dollar just to send analysts – yes, analysts – into an office.
Let’s be real – if these professional women were young “white boys” who know far less, nobody would bat an eye.
I believe that articles like this that usually scare away qualified, competent Nigerian professionals from coming home to work and help the Nigerian government.
I wish this piece was not published by Premium Times which I have a lot of respect for.
Afusat Kassim, a media and Advertising practitioner writes from Lagos.
