Top 10 Most Impactful Power Couples In Corporate Nigeria – O’tega and Rita Emerhor

Olorogun O’tega Emerhor, founder, Standard Group, is chairman of Standard Alliance Group. The group is made up of SA Insurance Plc, SA Life Assurance Limited, SA Capital and Asset Management Limited, SA Properties Limited and Lagoon Home Savings and Loans Limited.

Standard Alliance Insurance Plc, the flagship of the group, is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. It offers general risk underwriting services as well as life assurance and annuity products designed to cover a wide spectrum of risks to which people and businesses are exposed. These include insurance cover to homeowners against burglary and housebreaking, fire and special perils, risk and computer/electronics insurance.

The company’s service menu also includes professional indemnity, consequential loss, goods-in-transit, machinery breakdown, public/product liability, contractors all-risk and fidelity guarantee insurance. Also available are engineering insurance cover for erection and plant all-risks insurance.

The company also provides special risk insurance covers for boiler and pressure vessels, marine cargo and hull, oil and gas, aviation insurance, travel and compulsory insurance.

A first-class graduate in accounting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, O’tega is a financial expert highly experienced in banking where he played a big role in the industry’s survival and growth processes. He attained the position of pioneer managing director/chief executive officer at Crystal Bank – which later became Standards Trust Bank that merged with UBA.

Mrs. Rita Emerhor, an economist from the University of the Manchester UK, is group executive director, Standard Alliance Group.She also holds a Masters’ degree in leisure and hospitality management from the University of Sheffield UK.  She brings into the management team of Standard Alliance Group many years of across industry experience from investment banking at Vetiva Capital Management Limited, oil and gas from Oando Plc and mortgage banking from Lagoon Home Savings and Loans.

She is also CEO, Heroes Furniture Ltd and the driver of the Heroes brand, which is into interior decoration, home and office furnishing and real estate. Heroes Furniture is known for high quality and exotic furniture for top of the class customers – individuals, companies and governments.

O’tega is achartered accountant and like Rita, has working experience that cuts across sectors and industries, including politics. After great accomplishments in banking, he crossed over to insurance, investment management and real estate. He started Standard Alliance Insurance Plc in 1996. His strength is built in excellent academic credentials: he cleared virtually all the prizes for best graduating students in his department and faculty in 1983.

He is also chairman, Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja Transcorp Metropolitan Calabar and a director of Transcorp Plc. He governs the board of Heroes Group of companies and serves as a director in Suntrust Oil Limited, PCSS Limited and Interacti Logic Solutions.

He had a wide exposure in banking where he worked in Citibank Nigeria, Fidelity Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank and attained the chief executive officer position at Crystal Bank. In 1998, he led a group of investors to take over the then ailing Comet Merchant Bank and turned it around to become First Atlantic Bank Plc of which he became chairman.

The bank later merged with Inland Bank and O’tega became vice chairman of the post-merger entity – First Inland Bank. The bank was subsequently acquired by First City Monument Bank in 2012.

O’tega is a front-line member of African Business Leadership Forum; fellow, Institute of Credit and Risk Management of Nigeria; fellow, Academy for Entrepreneurial Studies and member, Institute of Marketing Consultants, among others.

Rita started the Heroes brand as TP flowers three staff, which has metamorphosed into Heroes Group of companies employing over a hundred staff. From the company’s headquarters in Lekki, she oversees springing branches across the nation with key operations in Port Harcourt and Abuja. Heroes Property Limited is the real estate arm of Heroes Group, has made its mark in developing and selling properties to both upper and lower strata of society.

O’tega and Rita are also impacting society through Fair Life Africa Foundation, through which they are doing a lot in taking children off the streets, improving them and uniting them with their families. They provide them access to education through scholarship.

Follow up employment and career assistance after school is also part of their impactful package. They are also working to enrich the lives of the most impoverished in society, support and empower the most vulnerable and transform lives through social initiatives and programmes.