Dayo Okusami – GC Powerlist
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Africa 2015

Dayo Okusami

Group general counsel | Atlantic Energy

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Africa 2015

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Dayo Okusami

Group general counsel | Atlantic Energy

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Formerly Templars’ youngest partner, Dayo Okusami was not only Atlantic Energy’s first group general counsel but its first employee. As such, he was tasked with building the entire legal function from scratch in parallel with the business itself. ‘Because I had a good reputation in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria, the attraction of a start-up company still involved in deal-making was very attractive’, he explains, adding: ‘I don’t know where I’ll be from one week to next ’.

Leading a five-strong team of legal, corporate and procurement specialists, he also heads corporate secretarial and sits as director of some international companies in the group. ‘I would say my role is slightly different from most but it’s not unique’, he says. ‘It’s a small company so I have direct access to and a good relationship with the CEO. We have been in the trenches together. There’s also a very business-oriented side of what I have to do.

This business involvement has amended my thinking – I’ve become much more of a commercial lawyer’. Okusami has negotiated billion-dollar contracts, working across Nigeria, the UK and America. Operating in Nigeria’s relatively unchartered territory brings a ‘unique’ element to the deals he is negotiating, he says, with added challenges created by the unpredictability of the country’s legal, compliance and business environments. ‘Nigeria already has the reputation of being the Wild West so you need to be able to do things properly. That’s a constant challenge’.

The level of skilled in-house lawyers has grown considerably in recent years, he says, and he has seen a huge trend towards lawyers leaving the biggest firms to become general counsels. This, he attributes in large part to economic growth and the rising numbers of international companies entering the jurisdiction.

The Nigerian economy is now either on a par with, or larger than South Africa. Nigeria is also somewhat central – it’s six or seven hours from Europe. It’s English speaking. A lot of international companies base their Central, West African or Sub-Saharan quarters in Nigeria. This international backdrop also adds to the focus on increasing compliance’.

 

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