When Gbenga Alade took over as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria in February 2024, he inherited one of the most unusual jobs in Nigerian finance. Not unusual because the work is complicated, although it is, but because AMCON exists to solve a problem that most institutions prefer not to talk about openly: what happens when powerful people borrow enormous sums of money from Nigerian banks and simply decide not to pay it back.
Alade has been talking about it openly since day one. “Most of them took the loans with no intention whatsoever to repay the debt,” he said at a public engagement earlier this year. “AMCON obligors damaged the Nigerian economy.” Coming from the head of a government institution, that is a remarkably blunt thing to say. But then, bluntness appears to be part of how he runs things.
He came to AMCON from six years as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of GTBank UK Limited, where he managed a regulated banking institution in one of the world’s most demanding financial jurisdictions. Before that, his career took him through some of the more formative years of Nigerian banking. He holds a First Class degree in Finance and a Master’s degree in Finance, both from the University of Lagos, and he added a Corporate Governance programme at Columbia Business School in 2025. He is, in short, someone who understands how money moves and what it looks like when it is deliberately hidden.
That last part matters because hiding money is exactly what some of AMCON’s obligors have done. The corporation is currently sitting on nearly 7,000 unresolved Eligible Bank Assets valued at over N1.167 trillion, and the concentration of that debt is striking. Just 350 obligors account for more than 80 percent of what AMCON acquired, with close to 300 of them currently fighting the corporation in court at various levels of the Nigerian judiciary. Some have taken their assets abroad. Alade’s response has been to commission foreign asset tracers specifically tasked with locating them, an approach that signals AMCON under his leadership is willing to go wherever the money went.
The results of his first years in the job reflect that intensity. AMCON recovered N156 billion in 2024. In the first half of 2026 alone, it pulled in N165 billion, a 64 percent increase over the same period in 2025, while keeping its cost-to-recovery ratio at just 2.3 percent. Since the corporation’s founding in 2010, total recoveries have reached N2.347 trillion, with N3.6 trillion repaid to the Central Bank of Nigeria. These are not the numbers of an institution going through the motions.
In 2026, the Supreme Court delivered a judgment that significantly strengthened AMCON’s legal standing in debt recovery proceedings, a ruling that Alade has said will have consequences for cases well beyond those currently before the courts. He has also reviewed the commission structure for the recovery agents and solicitors working on AMCON’s behalf, aligning their incentives more directly with the job of returning public funds to the system.
At a Stakeholders’ Retreat organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Banking in 2026, Alade laid out the full picture for lawmakers and made a direct case for stronger legislative backing to close the loopholes that have allowed recalcitrant debtors to use court processes as a tool for delay rather than a legitimate pursuit of justice. His message was pointed: the corporation has done well by any global standard, but it needs the law to be as determined as it is.
Away from the litigation and recovery operations, AMCON’s management of NTEL, the telecommunications company under its portfolio, has been one of the more encouraging stories of Alade’s tenure. He has credited the quality of the board and management now running NTEL for the progress the company has made, describing the ongoing transformation as one of the most notable things the corporation has achieved in any sector outside banking.
In July 2026, Alade received the African Business Leadership Special Commendation Award at the 16th African Business Leadership Awards in London, was inducted into the African Leadership Council, and received a Special Commendation from the State of South Carolina in the same sitting. New Telegraph had earlier recognised AMCON for Stellar Performance in Asset Recovery, noting that the corporation’s recovery rate against its balance at purchase has outpaced comparable institutions in other countries, including KAMCO of South Korea, one of the most cited benchmarks in the global asset management industry.
When the debate surfaces, as it periodically does, about whether AMCON has served its purpose and should be wound down, Alade is consistent in his response. He has noted that many of those making that argument most forcefully are the very obligors who would benefit from the corporation’s closure. “We will not relent,” he has said, “until all the outstanding debts are fully realised.” With over a trillion naira still on the table and a Supreme Court ruling now behind it, AMCON is nowhere near done.
Samuel Agboola is a member of the editorial team of TheScript Newspaper
