First Bank of Nigeria Limited has announced the graduation of 20 successful participants in the fourth edition of its Senior Management Development Programme (SMDP) at an event held recently at Oriental Hotel, Lagos.
Before the 2023 graduation, the SMDP had produced 52 graduates. The Bank successfully graduated 23 participants in its inaugural edition, held in 2018; 17 in 2019 and 12 in 2020.
The Senior Management Development Programme (SMDP) is FirstBank’s intensive modular programme for a select group of senior managers to principal managers who are proven leaders
in their respective functions and identified as central to the Bank’s succession plan.
The SMDP is an intensive skill development programme structured to enhance core leadership and business competencies of elite senior management staff within the Bank. It consists of three instructor-led modular periods adopting a blend of classroom lectures, experiential activities, flipped learning strategies and peer-to-peer discussions to develop the desired talent
pool.
“This programme is one of FirstBank’s key initiatives designed to create a dependable pool of
highly skilled, favourably competitive, and globally minded Senior Managers. It is also aimed at
accelerating their journey through the very demanding process of becoming outstanding leaders
and management executives,” said Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, CEO of FirstBank Group.
“FirstBank is widely acclaimed for sound corporate governance and this programme is further
proof of our commitment to grooming and development. Through the Senior Management
Development Programme, we emphasise sound leadership as the ethos and language of
Bankwide conversations; this provides an empirical means of guaranteeing the Bank’s
leadership bench strength both for now and the future,” he concluded.
The Senior Management Development Programme (SMDP) is among the three core leadership
programmes and strategic approaches designed to sustain performance, build capacity and
promote the empowerment of employees from the lower cadres to the upper levels. The other
programmes are Leadership Acceleration Programme and FirstBank Management Associate Programme (FMAP).
These programmes aim at internally identifying and developing high-potential talents who could take up the mantle of being the next generation of the Bank’s leaders, thereby building on its over 129 years of heritage since its founding.
