Sanwo-Olu, Fashola, key policy leaders advocate alternative finance as Nigeria’s growth engine

The Alternative Bank, AltBank, recently hosted investors, entrepreneurs, wealth creators and institutional decision-makers to a private intelligence forum held in Victoria Island, Lagos.

Themed ‘Beyond Interest: Capital, Innovation, and the Future of Wealth’, the forum was convened to advance the case for non-interest finance as a practical route to mobilising patient capital into Nigeria’s productive economy, as well as press investors and policymakers to judge every allocation by both the returns it earns and the capacity it builds.

The programme, which was also supported by AltDrive and Nigeria’s first full-fledged composite takaful operator, Noor Takaful, featured a series of intelligence briefings from public-sector leaders, capital-market operators and non-interest finance advocates.

Opening the forum, Muhtar Bakare, Chairman of The Alternative Bank, framed the day around a single question: how to mobilise capital in ways that serve both those who own it and the society in which it must earn its return. He argued that Nigeria’s constraint is less a shortage of capital than a shortage of the trust that allows capital to do patient work.

“What we lack is not effort. We lack capital that stays long enough to turn effort into capacity, capacity into durable jobs and durable jobs into stability. That is why the distinction between extractive and productive capital matters,” Bakare said.

The Executive Governor of Lagos State, H.E. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, delivered a keynote address on the state’s role as a catalyst for private capital. The address positioned the government not as a competitor to private investment but as an enabler of it, citing Lagos’s infrastructure programme, the state’s recent dual bond issuance and the Lekki corridor as instances of public action changing the risk-return calculus for private investors.

“The future of finance is not only about the price of capital; it is increasingly about the quality of the economic activity that capital enables. Lagos is not only open for business; Lagos is prepared to do business.” Sanwo-Olu, who was represented by the Honourable Commissioner for Finance, Abayomi Oluyomi, stated.

In special remarks, Babatunde Raji Fashola, former Governor of Lagos State and former Minister of Works and Housing, shared his experience on the value of non-interest financing. He argued that capital anchored to real, productive assets and to the public good delivers more durable value than money chased for short-term yield, and urged investors and institutions to weigh the long-term social returns of where they place their funds.

Delivering his brief on ‘The Business Case for Ethical Capital’, Abubakar Suleiman, Promoter of Non-Interest Banking in Nigeria and Board Member of Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc, traced The Alternative Bank’s journey from a modest non-interest window opened by Sterling Bank in 2014 to an institution he said now holds total assets approaching ₦500 billion and serves nearly a million customers. He made the case for what he called a “full ledger” approach to investment, one that counts an allocation’s effect on customers, employees, communities, public infrastructure and the environment alongside the investor’s return.

“The Alternative Bank has shown that non-interest banking can grow, win customers, and generate profit. The business case for ethical capital already exists. Our task is to apply it with discipline,” said Suleiman.

He pointed to WasteBanc, AltBank’s recycling initiative with the Lagos Waste Management Authority, and to Nigeria’s sovereign Sukuk programme as evidence that values-aligned finance can hold to commercial standards while connecting capital to identifiable, productive assets.

Other speakers, Dr. Stanley Jacob, Group Chief, Innovation and Technology at Meristem, and Ajibola Tobi-Osho, Executive Director of Tugrande Alliance Limited, made a case for shifting the diagnosis of Nigeria’s – and Africa’s – financial challenges. Jacob argued that Africa’s core financial challenge is infrastructural, not one of liquidity, and that the convergence of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) with the tokenisation of real-world assets could hand Nigeria a first-mover advantage in continental capital markets. Tobi-Osho seconded the point, noting that while Nigeria has moved from crisis management to macroeconomic stability, the binding constraint has shifted from inflation to capital allocation, with banks parking record liquidity at the central bank rather than lending to the businesses that drive jobs and growth.

‘Beyond Interest’ drew a room of senior investors, executives and public-sector leaders, including Olatunji Mayaki, Chairman, Sterling Bank; Hassan Yusuf, Managing Director, The Alternative Bank; Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, Founder and Managing Partner of Aruwa Capital Management; Tonye Cole, Co-Founder and former Group Executive Director of Sahara Group; Aminu Tukur, Vice-Chairman, Noor Takaful; Korede Demola-Adeniyi, Executive Director, The Alternative Bank; Chief Idris Olorunnimbe, Chairman of the Board of the Nigerian Communications Commission; Yemi Keri, President of the Africa Business Angel Network (ABAN); Sadiq Dantata, Chairman, Golden Alchemy; Garba Mohammed, Executive Director, The Alternative Bank; Dr. Adesegun Akin-Olugbade, OON, Founder and Managing Partner, Luwaji Nominees; Sulaiman Adedokun, Group Managing Director, Meristem Securities Limited; Jimi Ogbobine, Associate Director and Head of Consulting, Agusto Consulting, and more.