When names were being considered for the Old Boy Spotlight in the centenary issue of the Agsoba NEWS, Ponmile Oloyede’s was one that came up strongly. After months of tracking him on LinkedIn, we finally got him to commit to a sit-down with the Editorial team. Armed with a long list of questions, we delved into unraveling the personality of Agsoba Ponmile Oloyede (8893). When the interview began, his excitement was easy to see and we were sure we would have a great time. And a great time, we did have. The first thing you’d notice is a graceful and humble mien presented in a look that belies his person.
He wears a short dread on a bespectacled face that might at once make you mistake him for an educated reggae star -save a guitar, a smoldering wrap of the abominable vegetable and a multi-colored wool hat. But Ponmile Oloyede is anything but a musician. He is the Senior Vice President, CCAR Model Oversight, Risk Planning and Analysis at Citi Bank. Prior to this, he was Vice President, Core Modeling, JPMorgan Chase & Co. “I moved to Citi from JPMorgan Chase some three years ago.
For Citi I do something called risk model oversight where we help the bank to oversee the models that they use to forecast the possible losses the bank could incur so they can put money (reserves) aside for that,” he said with a crisp accent he attempts to keep Nigerian but repeatedly falls short. When prodded, he confessed his Nigerian Ness despite being away for so long. “There is so much to love about Nigeria despite the despondency, I am a Nigerian at heart, I am very proud Yoruba. In fact one of my proudest accomplishments at Abeo was that I got an A1 in Yoruba. I speak Yoruba and Egba well; these things define me, culturally, as a person, as a Yoruba, iwa omoluabi, all of those are not things that can be replicated within the US cultural milieu. We are essentially economic refugees here,” he chipped in with a tinge of sadness he did well to hide with a grin. Taking us on a journey into his formative years, Ponmile went into a graceful monologue that gave credence to his sense of reflection and deference to self-direction.
Born to a father whose education did not pass 6th grade and a mother who barely made middle grade, he had very little familial influence in his education. “I was one of the very few people who attended boarding school right from elementary school. I was 5 years old when I was enrolled at Children’s House School (CHS) Ibara. Unlike many who went to Abeo, I had no legacy affiliation to Abeograms. But there was this senior, I think he was the assistant senior prefect at Abeo at the time, (Senior Makinde) who stayed in our boarding house at CHS, so it was his influence that swayed me and also the fact that Abeokuta Grammar School sounded like the school for the entire Abeokuta and not like, for example, Igbore High School and the likes who seemed to my 10-year-old mind to be for students drawn only from a certain quarter of the city. From the first day (at Abeograms), I felt at home; I knew it was the right place for me, I loved every moment of my stay. For someone who lived his entire childhood in the boarding house, far from parental guidance, its beggars’ belief how he turned out to be such an academically outstanding individual. “I always did well in school. Coming from Children House to Abeo, I had already spent five years in the boarding school so I settled in pretty fast. In my first term at Abeo, I came first in the class and as it turned out, my result was the overall best in the entire JS 1 for that year. Immediately there
were eyes on me but I was pretty scattered in school, I’d lose the keys to my lockers every time. But what I did was every holiday, totally self-directed, I would just tell my dad I want to go for summer lessons, finish all the New General Math and all for the year and go back to school. During school, I would not take classes seriously and even during prep I’d be all over the place and people were like “Is this guy reading at all?” He surmises with an infectious laughter you could feel came from a place of grateful reminisces. “Then I went for JETS (Junior Engineers, Technicians and Scientists Club) and became the best student in Nigeria. That was a big deal at the time because Abeokuta Grammar School had barely participated to a large extent. Knowing that someone from Abeokuta Grammar School competed with students from the Kings Colleges of the world, Federal Government Colleges and won…all contributed to the so-called legend you speak of.” On how he came to be so academically driven, he tells the story of a particular young girl whose picture was hung on the wall in the principal’s office. Upon inquiries, he was told the girl had won some competition and so had her photo frame on the wall as a form of honour. “I wanted to have my picture up there too and so that was a driving force,” he said with a smile. He then quickly gave much kudos to the quality of teachers in the school at the time. “I remember Mrs. Thomas Oyedele who taught Science; then Mr. Abass who coordinated the JETS competition as well as Mr Afuape who taught us Chemistry. I remember at JETS, I was the 4th best student in Chemistry in the whole of Nigeria, and that was due to the quality of teaching… even to French. I had learnt French from Children’s House School and by SS 2 I represented Abeo and Ogun State at the National French competition; in fact, the French teacher then was the President of the National French Teachers’ Association.
Then the class I graduated with was such a competitive one, by the time we got out, there were about 12 to 15 of us who got into the Medical School in Ibadan. Now they are cardiologists in US, UK; one of us is a professor now, it was a case of inu ikoko dudu ni eko funfun ti n jade….” Like every brilliant student, he was the darling of Principal Okunade who took over the principalship after a brief interregnum following the exit of Chief Akiode. Somewhere in the recesses of his brain, the mention of Principal Okunade drew a hearty laughter from him: “The first time Principal Okunade introduced himself to us, he used all sorts of weird nicknames for himself and we were clearly mortified. But I grew to become close to him especially as I was at the forefront of academics and everything. He was a really great person for me and we got on really well.”
For this writer, who entered Abeograms a year after Agsoba Oloyede’s graduation, this was not news as he witnessed Principal Okunade praise the excellence of Ponmile Oloyede to high heavens years after he had graduated. Definitely, there was a shared respect and friendship, as it were, between teacher and student. Ponmile, who was also the senior prefect in the 1992/3 session, would graduate with the overall best result in 1993, a feat that sealed his place in the hallowed class of geniuses who have walked the hallways of Abeograms. After Abeograms, he proceeded to University of Lagos to study Chemical Engineering as against Petroleum Engineering at University of Ibadan because he felt “petroleum engineering was too limiting as compared to Chemical which was broader, so to speak.” “At Unilag, I was an amateur actor and secretary of Theatre 15 (which had Tee A and Teju Babyface as members at some point) and took part in a couple of plays,” he began. “In my final year, I was elected the President of the Students’ Union Government.” Many would assume academics cannot mix with student politics nor social exertions, but how did he do it? “Err, at Abeo, I was primarily the school debater for a long time,” he answered, “and in my very little head, I thought fancy speeches were all that was needed to be a student leader but it was more than that…I ran against 10/11 other people and won, it was quite a resounding victory but the motivation was just that I liked giving speeches, liked talking in public and all.” After Unilag, he went to the US for grad school and did a masters in Chemistry at Bowling Green State University. Thereafter he won a Japanese government scholarship for a PhD in Theoretical Chemistry (Functional Molecular Science).
He returned to the US and did another master in Physics at University of Mississippi before a post-doctoral fellowship at New Jersey Institute of Technology where he lectured engineering students in Statistics thereby growing some skills in statistical programming, a veritable contribution to him getting a job at JPMorgan Chase. He is currently running an MBA in Finance and Analytical Finance at University of Chicago Booth. How many of his peers does he still connect with, the Editorial team asked him? “I married an Abeo girl, my wife, (her maiden name is Bukola Balogun) sat in front of me in JS 1B; we were both in the hostel. I still keep in touch with a whole of them, mainly through our WhatsApp group. One of my most notable friendships is with Akintunde Babatunde, with whom I represented Ogun State at the National JETS competition (pictured below 2nd left to Governor Osoba), and who is now a Professor of Civil Engineering at Leeds University.” A serial scholar himself (he won the Shell National Scholarship and AG Leventis Scholarship at Unilag; MillingtonBarnard Scholarship at University of Mississippi and a Chicago Booth Merit Scholarship for his MBA), he confessed his desire to give back to the school who made him. He remembers the impact the Otunba (now Senator) Oyero DA Scholarship he won in JS3 had on his family.
While he has variously contributed to Club 8893 projects in the school, his passion for a solo project remains alive. “By God’s grace, I hope to do something similar on a personal level very soon,” he concluded. As we rounded up the interview, he went into a reminiscence of the Founder’s Day events of his time and how they would line up to see the great alumni who would turn up for the celebrations. “It was always a thing of pride seeing the then Ooni (Oba Okunade Sijuade DA), Alake (Oba Oyebade Lipede DA), Osile (Oba Dapo Tejuosho DA); you always felt wowed with the realization that all these important people attended the same school you attended.”
