Herbert Wigwe, the Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Access Holdings Plc has been feared dead in a helicopter crash along with his wife, son, and a former Group Chairman of the Nigerian Exchange Group Plc, Abimbola Ogunbanjo.
They are reported to have been en route to Boulder City, Nevada from Palm Springs, California, on Friday night when the helicopter conveying them crashed at about 10 pm, near a small town in California’s Mojave Desert.
Authorities said they have not been able to locate any survivors, and the cause of the crash remains unknown. The U.S. National Transportation Board has sent a team to the site to investigate the accident.
Born on August 15, 1966, Herbert Wigwe was a banker and entrepreneur, and rose to emerge as one of the biggest names and leaders in Nigeria’s banking and financial sector. He was also the Group Managing Director/CEO of Access Bank Plc, succeeding his business partner, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, from January 2014 till April 2022.
Herbert Wigwe is also the founder of Wigwe University, a budding tertiary institution located in Rivers State, where he hailed from.
He is also an alumnus of the Harvard Business School Executive Management Programme and holds a master’s in Banking and Finance from the University College of North Wales; another master’s in Financial Economics from the University of London, and a B.Sc. in Accounting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.