28 Months After, Late Herbert Wigwe, NDIC MD, Others Top Access HoldCo’s Unclaimed Dividend List
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Access Holdings Plc (Access HoldCo), on Thursday published the list of shareholders yet to perfect the process of receiving dividends declared by the company’s board of directors.
Dividends is the portion of a company’s profit after tax distributed to shareholders according to the number of shares they hold based on the recommendation of the board of directors. Dividends can either be by final (distributed at the end of the financial year) or interim (at the end of a quarter, or more popularly, at the end of half-year).
The 3,295-page unclaimed dividend list released through the Nigerian Exchange portal, Access Holdings Plc (AccessCorp) included Wigwe Herbert, its first Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (following its transformation to a holding company structure) who died 28 months ago on February 9, 2024, along with his wife Chizoba, and son Chizi. The trio, along with Abimbola Ogunbanjo, the maiden chairman of the Nigerian Exchange Group Plc died in the Eurocopter EC130 crash near Nipton, California, on their way to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas.
At the time of his death, Wigwe is credited with a combined direct and indirect holding of between 7.3% and 8.8%, when the stake of Tengen Holdings (Mauritius) Limited is factored in.
The list reviewed on Friday contained other prominent Nigerian shareholders (individual and corporate (including first generation universities).
Individuals on the list include Thompson Oludare Sunday, the current MD of the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC); and Oba Adedapo Tejuoso, Osile of Oke-Ona, Egbaland, Abeokuta; and Olabode Vincent (simply known Ola Vincent), first a deputy governor, and later governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) between 1977 and 1982, who died at 87 in September 2012.
Also on the long list is the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN); just as there are Estates like that of Alhaji F.A Durosinmi Etti; pension funds and staff cooperatives such as UTC Pension Fund, University Teachers Cooperative Investment & Credit Society Ltd, Mellanby Hall Flat, University of Ibadan; University of Jos Academic Staff; University of Agriculture Abeokuta Staff Cooperative; and Unique Unilag Staff Co-operative T&C.
Federal tertiary institutions on the list of shareholders are: Usmanu Dan Fodio University, Sokoto; universities of Jos, Maiduguri, Nigeria Nsukka, Lagos, Port Harcourt, as well as the Faculty of Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and The Polytechnic Ibadan.
There are also various parishes of the Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist and Pentecostal Churches prominent among which is the Redeemed Christian Church of God. There are also Islamic organisations like The Supreme Islamic Congress.
Nigeria’s Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) estimates the cumulative value of unclaimed dividends in the country at approximately N242 billion, representing an increase from the N190 billion recorded in late 2023 and the N215 billion reported in early 2024.
From just N2 billion in 1999, Unclaimed Dividend has been on the rise despite efforts by various management of the SEC, first hit N80 billion in 2014 and then N168 billion, six years later, N190 billion in 2023; N215 billion the following year; and N242 billion in 2025.
The growth in Unclaimed Dividend is linked to legacy issues including identity management concerns such as discrepancies in investor names across older physical share certificates, bank accounts, and Bank Verification Numbers (BVN); inheritance issues like beneficiaries being unaware that deceased relatives bought shares especially the 2004– 2008 surge; change of addresses without notifying company registrars; multiple registrations where a single person bought shares using variants of their name leading to identity crisis at the point of claiming ownership with the names different their bank names.
