The Central Bank of Nigeria has debited Stanbic IBTC for allegedly helping MTN in illegally repatriating money. The bank informed the Nigerian Stock Exchange that CBN debited it N1.9bn ($5.2m) from its account.

Following our earlier announcement to The Nigerian Stock Exchange (“NSE”) on 30 August 2018, in respect of the penalty of N1.886 billion imposed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (“CBN”) on our banking subsidiary – Stanbic IBTC Bank PLC (the “Bank”) in relation to the remittance of foreign exchange on the basis of certain capital importation certificates issued to MTN Nigeria Communications Limited, we write to update The NSE that the CBN has debited the account of our banking subsidiary with the CBN for the full amount of the above stated fine advised to the Bank.

Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC as well as our banking subsidiary maintain our position on this matter, which is the fact that the Bank has done nothing illegal and accordingly the Bank will continue to provide CBN with documents and details in support of our contention that our actions in relation to these transactions were not illegal.

No matter how you see it, the MTN $8.1 billion refund is now real. CBN would be callous to have gone ahead and debited Stanbic IBTC if it was not obviously confident of its investigation. In other words, MTN has $8.1 billion to worry about as a real action has been taken by the government.

Yes, MTN Nigeria has another issue: now, it is coming from the Central Bank of Nigeria. The bank asked it yesterday to refund $8.13B (with B) which the apex bank said the mobile giant (allegedly) illegally repatriated. This is the CBN Letter to MTN (MTN-Letter-of-outcome-of-investigation)

But note one thing: the MTN Nigeria IPO is about dead for 2018. The next chapter of MTN Nigeria will be determined in coming weeks. If the market has become toxic, do not rule out the unthinkable: MTN may consider! Yes, sins are not forgiven easily in Nigeria. The good news is that there are still courts but with the debit on Stanbic IBTC account, I am not sure those banks that recently pumped N200 billion into MTN Nigeria would be laughing anymore. MTN Nigeria is on paralysis at this moment of its history when you consider the extra $2 billion on unpaid taxes and fees coming from the Attorney General office.

One of the hardest realizations for any founder is coming to conclusion that he has to make way if he wants to save his company. But making way does not mean leaving the company, but rather understanding that the sector has moved into a new era where competitive advantage has moved from just being a visionary, into having the capacity to execute, and run a business at scale.

Yes, you can be a visionary founder but that does not mean that you can be execution-oriented to compete when some of the elemental components that made you a star have diminished in your sector. As competition heats and sectors mature, gross margins drop. Most times, competitive advantage moves to having steely-hardened execution-oriented brilliant professional managers over fast-breaking visionary founders.

New research from a team of professors at the business schools of Duke, Vanderbilt, and Harvard universities finds that founder-run companies to be less productive and more poorly managed than those whose chief executives didn’t start the firm.

The researchers looked through data collected by the World Management Survey, a detailed review of more than 13,000 mid-to large-sized companies in 32 countries. Firms led by the people who founded them were 9.4% less productive, on average, and on average had consistently lower management scores—which typically rose once the founder-CEO was replaced.

“Founder CEOs were by far the worst type of CEO,” said Victor Bennett, an assistant professor of strategy at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and a co-author of the paper

The founder of Uber was a visionary founder but he was not a steely-hardened execution-oriented manager to manage a business in a maturing sector like e-hailing transportation. So, for Uber to thrive, where just breaking things fast was not the main advantage anymore, someone has to take over. We can say the same in Zenefits – a benefit management startup which grew under its founder until it hit a hard rock on growth execution.

When the visionary loses its scent, the founder should move to Executive Chairman position and hire a CEO with execution-oriented capabilities. Many founders do this when they realize that they perform better in the big picture phase over the daily rituals of running a business as a CEO. Jack Ma as Executive Chairman is shaping Alibaba Group even though he has handed over the operational keys to a CEO. In the last few years when Larry Ellison moved to the Chairman position, Oracle has transformed into a stronger innovating company, moving into cloud and blockchain at a faster pace.

In the next 5 years, the Nigerian fintech will enter that phase where just being a visionary founder may not help a startup. Yes, the competitiveness will come from having execution-oriented managers to steer the ship. Of course nothing stops one from being a visionary founder and a stellar manager at the same time: examples abound in the lives of Richard Branson (Virgin Atlantic), Aliko Dangote (Dangote Group) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon).