Yewande Zaccheaus stands as a transformative figure in the Nigerian commercial landscape, a professional whose journey from the structured corridors of high-stakes banking to the uncharted territory of professional event management redefined an entire industry. Her career is not merely a chronicle of entrepreneurial success but a masterclass in institutional building. By establishing Eventful Nigeria Limited and co-founding organisations like WIMBIZ, she transitioned from managing corporate legalities to architecting lasting frameworks for leadership, mentorship, and excellence. Her legacy, rooted in the belief that true success is measured by the strength of the structures one leaves behind, continues to provide a blueprint for a new generation of Nigerian professionals striving to marry personal ambition with enduring public impact.
Ibadan, 1961: The Household That Valued Excellence
Yewande Zaccheaus was born in Ibadan in April 1961 into a family where excellence was not an aspiration but an expectation and where the warmth of close-knit domesticity and the rigour of public achievement were never treated as opposites. Her father, the late High Chief Bayo Akinnola, was a man whose professional life and personal conduct alike gave his children a template for how to carry themselves. Her sister, Dr. Omobola Johnson, would go on to serve as Nigeria’s Minister of Communication Technology and become one of the most respected technology policy figures the country has produced. The household was precisely the kind of environment where intellectual seriousness and familial devotion coexisted without strain.
She remembers her father with a tenderness that has not dimmed with time. He took the family on holidays — from picnics by the streams at Olokemeji in Oyo State to visits to their grandfather’s home in Ondo, and later to destinations abroad. Those trips, modest in some cases and ambitious in others, forged a bond between the siblings that held across the decades. It was a deliberate act of parenting: Chief Akinnola understood that memory and closeness were things you had to create, not simply hope for.
As a child, Yewande was intelligent and determined, though not without her early battles with expectation. Her father had hoped she would become a dentist, his own mother had died from a tooth-related complication, and the grief had crystallised into a wish. He nudged his eldest daughter toward the sciences. The problem was that she was not a scientist, and no amount of discipline changed that reality. She struggled through science subjects despite her evident ability in other areas. When she finally switched to the arts, she flourished immediately. Law, when it arrived, felt like coming home.
“The values my parents instilled in me can never be outdated and have stood me in good stead all the seasons of my life. These values include integrity, humility, a sense of justice and fairness, commitment to family, diligence and a deep abiding faith in God.”
— Yewande Zaccheaus
Lagos and Cambridge: The Education of a Professional
Yewande studied Law at the University of Lagos and then did what very few of her contemporaries were doing; she headed to Cambridge University in England to earn a Master of Laws (LL.M.). The academic foundation she built at one of the world’s oldest and most demanding institutions was more than a credential. It shaped her orientation to institutions, governance, and professional responsibility in ways that would surface, visibly, in every role she subsequently held. Cambridge gave her the intellectual confidence to operate at the highest levels and the analytical framework to insist on structure where others settled for improvisation.
She began her career as a Legal Officer at Nigerian-American Merchant Bank, spending a period in private legal practice before pivoting fully into the banking sector. Then, in 1989, the same year she got married, she joined Ecobank Nigeria Plc as its pioneer company secretary and legal adviser. The title understated the scope. She was one of the foundational architects of that institution’s governance framework at a moment when Ecobank was still building its identity in the Nigerian financial landscape. She took the role with corresponding seriousness: designing structures, establishing protocols, and demonstrating what it looked like when legal and corporate governance were treated as strategy rather than compliance.
“As a result of my legal and banking background, I ensured organisational structure and professionalism were the hallmarks of the company.”
— Yewande Zaccheaus
Over the following years, she rose steadily through the ranks, eventually reaching the position of Deputy General Manager. For nearly eighteen years, Yewande operated at the intersection of law and banking, building a reputation among colleagues and clients as someone who combined legal precision with an instinct for how organisations should function, not merely on paper, but in the daily conduct of their people. Those eighteen years were not a prelude. They were a long and serious education, and she has said as much herself.
1999: Returning from Maternity Leave, and Choosing a Different Life
In 1999, Yewande Zaccheaus returned from maternity leave. What should have been an unremarkable administrative event became something she would later describe as a moment of quiet but definitive reckoning. She had spent nearly two decades doing excellent work inside institutions built by others. She knew she wanted to build something of her own. The question was not whether, but what.
She began asking the people around her. She spoke to friends who had already made the leap into entrepreneurship, curious about how each of them had arrived at their particular business. The answer that came back, consistently, was the same: they were doing what came naturally to them, not what was fashionable or obviously profitable, but what they were intrinsically built for. That observation landed with force. She turned the same question on herself, and the answer was clear. She had always been good at organising people and events. It came instinctively: the ability to coordinate, to impose structure on complexity, to make coherence emerge from chaos. The remaining question was whether that instinct could become a business.
“I knew my gift and passion was organising people and events, but I was not quite sure how that could translate into a successful venture.”
— Yewande Zaccheaus
She spent months finding out. She read books, researched business models, and studied what was happening in the events industry internationally. She looked at Nigeria’s growing middle class and noticed the rising appetite for weddings, corporate experiences, and celebrations that required genuine coordination, the kind that informal arrangements and well-meaning friends simply could not reliably deliver. The gap in the market was visible to anyone willing to look at it seriously. Yewande was willing to look.
Not everyone received the decision with understanding. When word got out that she was leaving a Deputy General Manager position at a major bank to go into event planning, one friend, a fellow professional who knew exactly what she was walking away from, pulled her aside and said what a number of people were thinking but had not yet said aloud: with a Cambridge law degree and a senior executive title, she could not believe Yewande was going to spend her time arranging chairs and balloons for other people’s parties. The remark was not malicious. It was the honest reaction of someone whose imagination had been shaped by the conventional hierarchy of professions, and who could not yet see what Yewande could see. But Yewande has been direct about what would have happened if she had listened. “If I had listened to dream killers,” she has said, “Eventful would never have existed.” The vision was clear enough that the opinion of those who could not share it was not, in the end, the thing that determined the outcome. She went ahead. The friend’s remark, and the determination that outlasted it, became one of the more instructive footnotes to what followed.
In 2002, she resigned from Ecobank as a Deputy General Manager, walking away from the kind of seniority and security that her peers called the golden handcuffs, and founded Eventful Nigeria Limited. She started modestly, sharing office space with her husband Teni Zaccheaus Sr., who ran a printing and publishing company from the same premises. The arrangement kept overheads manageable while she tested and refined the concept. The first clients were corporate contacts who already knew her name and trusted her judgment. From that base, she built.
2002–2021: Pioneering a Profession
When Yewande launched Eventful, professional event management as a recognised industry barely existed in Nigeria. In London, New York, and Dubai, it was already well-structured, credentialled, and commercially established. In Lagos, the dominant assumption was that organising events was something a family member or a well-connected acquaintance did as an extended favour. The idea that it could be a company, with staff, systems, contracts, liability, and standards, was, to most people, a novelty.
She built the company the only way she knew how: with structure. Clear job descriptions, defined responsibilities, performance appraisals, accountability systems, and a refusal to cut corners on quality. Many who entered the industry around the same period did so informally, riding the wave without bothering to build the vessel. Eventful operated like the corporate entity its founder had spent eighteen years serving. Clients who wanted reliability, documentation, and professional execution began to seek her out, and word spread in the way that word about genuine quality always does, not through marketing but through experience.
The company grew steadily to encompass event design, theme development, venue sourcing, vendor management, and full supervision for weddings, corporate meetings, brand activations, funerals, and film productions. Over two decades, Eventful executed more than two thousand events. By 2012, when she convened the company’s tenth anniversary celebration at Harbour Point, Victoria Island, the names on the guest list, Aliko Dangote, Fola Adeola, Ibukun Awosika, Bisi Onasanya, Dotun Sulaiman, and Lagos Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, spoke to where Eventful had positioned itself in the national conversation. The symposium on entrepreneurship that formed the evening’s centrepiece was a statement: Eventful was not a service company alone. It was a platform for ideas about how Nigerian business should be done.
Beyond core operations, Yewande created a broader ecosystem. The Souk series, Food Souk, Beauty Souk, Fashion Souk, and Street Souk, became major showcases for indigenous entrepreneurs, youth-led brands, and the creative economy. The demand for Fashion Souk eventually grew strong enough to justify two editions a year. Street Souk, which her daughter Iretidayo helped initiate in 2018, evolved into one of the most influential streetwear platforms in Africa, staging events from Lagos to Dubai to London to Los Angeles and hosting brands, artists, and industry figures whose reach extended far beyond the Nigerian market.
“I am extremely proud of the fact that I am recognised for my pioneering efforts in the industry. It has inspired many others to join and now, event planning is easily one of the fastest growing businesses in Nigeria today.”
— Yewande Zaccheaus
One of the confirmations of what she had built came from an unexpected direction. A younger event planner sent her flowers and a note: “Thank you for leading the way so we could follow.” That single gesture captured what two decades of building had actually produced: not just a company, but a pathway into a profession that had not previously existed in any formal sense. When Yewande Zaccheaus stepped back from leadership in 2021 and handed the business to a successor, it continued to perform. The company was doing better two years after her departure than it had been on the day she left. That outcome was not accidental. It was the direct consequence of how she had chosen to build.
On Corporate Governance, Institutional Building, and What Outlasts You
One of the consistent threads running through Yewande Zaccheaus’s career — from her years as pioneer Company Secretary at Ecobank to her board roles at Wema Bank and Hartleys — is her conviction that institutions are not incidental to the work. They are the work. She has spoken and written extensively about the difference between building a personality-driven business and building an institution: the former collapses when its founder leaves; the latter has been constructed to outlast any single person’s involvement.
At Eventful, she put this conviction into practice. From relatively early in the company’s life, she was intentional about structure: clear job descriptions, performance appraisals, annual retreats at which every staff member from the receptionist to senior management could see the company’s financial performance, and a deliberate policy of making key staff members shareholders and directors so that their stake in the business was real rather than rhetorical. She sent staff to training programmes in Dubai, England, and the United States, not because she could easily afford to but because she believed world-class output required world-class development. She imposed on herself the discipline of proper records, audited accounts, and financial governance, standards she held to even when the informality of the broader Nigerian business environment might have made lower standards invisible.
When she eventually stepped back in 2021, the machine did not stall. This is the measure she applies to her own success: not the size of the business at its peak, not the names at the ten-year anniversary, not even the two thousand events executed over two decades, but the fact that what she built continued to function, and function better, without her at the centre of it. For Nigerian youth, especially those in the Southwest building businesses and civic institutions in a landscape of chronic institutional dysfunction, this is perhaps the most instructive thing about her: she demonstrated that it is possible to build something that transcends the founder, and she did it in a sector where that had never been done before.
“Build intentionally, manage your finances wisely, and create something that will stand the test of time.”
— Yewande Zaccheaus
Awards, Recognitions, and the Shape of a Legacy
The formal record of Yewande Zaccheaus’s achievements is substantial and spans multiple domains: entrepreneurship, women’s empowerment, corporate governance, and creative production. In 2011, she was named a recipient of the International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC) Award, a recognition extended to outstanding women entrepreneurs from emerging markets whose businesses have demonstrated growth, community impact, and professional rigour. The IWEC places its recipients in the company of a global network of women-led enterprises, and Yewande’s inclusion was a formal acknowledgment of what Eventful had already demonstrated on Nigerian soil: that a serious, professionally structured business could be built in the events space, led by a woman, and scaled over time.
In 2023, she was appointed a Non-Executive Director at Wema Bank Plc, one of Nigeria’s longest-established commercial banks, bringing the full weight of her corporate governance experience and institutional instincts into a formal board role. The same year, she served as a mentor within the Women’s Lifestyle Hub, a platform for female executives, alongside other senior women from Nigerian banking and industry. She also chairs the board of Hartleys Supermarket, extending her governance reach into the retail sector.
Beyond her own business, her contribution to the institutional architecture of women’s leadership in Nigeria is perhaps her most enduring structural achievement. WIMBIZ — Women in Management, Business and Public Service — which she co-founded and served as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees, has become one of the country’s most consequential organisations for women in leadership. What began as a gathering in a kitchen to plan a one-time conference became an annual institution with a reach that runs from university campuses to boardrooms to the political sphere. The flagship annual conference, the mentoring programmes, and the Winning Without Compromise initiative for young women are each legacies that operate independently of Yewande’s daily involvement and will continue to do so.
Her partnerships with Lagos Business School and the University of Lagos to provide entrepreneurship education to young people are consistent with the same institutional logic: that development which lasts is development that is embedded in skills, frameworks, and relationships, not in the personality or resources of a single individual.
On Corporate Governance, Institutional Building, and What Outlasts You
One of the consistent threads running through Yewande Zaccheaus’s career — from her years as pioneer Company Secretary at Ecobank to her board roles at Wema Bank and Hartleys — is her conviction that institutions are not incidental to the work. They are the work. She has spoken and written extensively about the difference between building a personality-driven business and building an institution: the former collapses when its founder leaves; the latter has been constructed to outlast any single person’s involvement.
At Eventful, she put this conviction into practice. From relatively early in the company’s life, she was intentional about structure: clear job descriptions, performance appraisals, annual retreats at which every staff member from the receptionist to senior management could see the company’s financial performance, and a deliberate policy of making key staff members shareholders and directors so that their stake in the business was real rather than rhetorical. She sent staff to training programmes in Dubai, England, and the United States, not because she could easily afford to but because she believed world-class output required world-class development. She imposed on herself the discipline of proper records, audited accounts, and financial governance, standards she held to even when the informality of the broader Nigerian business environment might have made lower standards invisible.
When she eventually stepped back in 2021, the machine did not stall. This is the measure she applies to her own success: not the size of the business at its peak, not the names at the ten-year anniversary, not even the two thousand events executed over two decades, but the fact that what she built continued to function, and function better, without her at the centre of it. For Nigerian youth, especially those in the Southwest building businesses and civic institutions in a landscape of chronic institutional dysfunction, this is perhaps the most instructive thing about her: she demonstrated that it is possible to build something that transcends the founder, and she did it in a sector where that had never been done before.
“Build intentionally, manage your finances wisely, and create something that will stand the test of time.”
— Yewande Zaccheaus
What Southwest Youth Can Learn from Her Journey
Yewande Zaccheaus has addressed young people on enough platforms — at The Platform Nigeria, at WIMBIZ events, at university outreach sessions, in interviews that have circulated widely — that her message to them is now both consistent and detailed. It does not rely on inspiration or aspiration alone. It has the specificity of someone who built something real and is willing to account honestly for how it was done.
Southwest youths should learn from her prioritisation of self-knowledge, identifying careers or businesses that align with their natural aptitudes rather than chasing temporary trends. This pursuit requires viewing corporate employment not as a delay, but as a critical period to master structural habits, accountability, and governance, which provides the necessary scaffolding to build a lasting venture. By focusing on what they are intrinsically built for, young people can sustain motivation through the challenging years that inevitably follow the launch of a new enterprise.
Furthermore, success is rooted in adopting “load-bearing” values like integrity, transparency, and genuine employee care, which foster long-term loyalty and professional stability. Resilience, as we have learned from Yewande’s story, should be practical and adaptive, rather than romanticized, especially when navigating crises. By refusing to let external circumstances dictate their path and instead creating systems that function independently of the founder, young entrepreneurs can create meaningful impact. As Yewande Zaccheaus advises:
“Build intentionally, manage your finances wisely, and create something that will stand the test of time.”
In 2023, two years after stepping down from Eventful’s leadership, Yewande Zaccheaus joined the board of Wema Bank as a Non-Executive Director. WIMBIZ continues to run its annual conference and mentoring programmes. Street Souk — the platform her daughter built in the event infrastructure Yewande created — is now staging events in seven cities across four continents. The ecosystem she built, and the institution she built it in, continue to function and grow.
There are not many figures in Nigerian public life of whom it can honestly be said that the things they built are still building themselves — still reaching people, still training the next generation, still shaping an industry — years after their direct daily involvement ended. Yewande Zaccheaus is one of them. She was born in Ibadan, educated at UNILAG and Cambridge, formed in the legal and banking corridors of Lagos, and chose, at a moment of genuine professional security, to step into the unknown and organise something that did not yet exist. The Southwest produced her. It is the kind of inheritance she deserves in return: not the tributes engraved on certificates, but the attention of those who are still building, still asking what comes naturally, and still deciding what kind of institutions they want to leave behind.
References
The Benchmark. “How Yewande Zaccheaus Turned a Fragmented Events Market into an Organised Ecosystem.” Happiness Uduak. December 5, 2025. https://thebenchmark.com.ng/how-yewande-zaccheaus-turned-a-fragmented-events-market-into-an-organised-ecosystem/
Duchess International Magazine. “Yewande Zaccheaus: Pioneering Excellence in Business and Beyond.” October 2, 2025. https://duchessinternationalmagazine.com
Punch Newspapers. “I Constantly Assess Myself — Yewande Zaccheaus.” Taiwo Ojoye. April 17, 2016. https://punchng.com/i-constantly-assess-myself-yewande-zaccheaus/
The Guardian Nigeria. “Matel-Okoh Hosts Yewande Zaccheaus, Toyin Bakare, Others at Women Lifestyle Hub Brunch.” Waliat Musa. May 31, 2023. https://guardian.ng/news/matel-okoh-hosts-yewande-zaccheaus-toyin-bakare-others-at-women-lifestyle-hub-brunch/
BellaNaija. “A Decade of Event Planning! Photos from Yewande Zaccheaus’ ‘Eventful at 10’ Celebration in Lagos.” Damilare Aiki. November 21, 2012. https://www.bellanaija.com/2012/11/a-decade-of-event-planning-photos-from-yewande-zaccheaus-eventful-at-10-celebration-in-lagos/
BusinessDay. “Wema Bank Plc Appoints Yewande Zaccheaus as Non-Executive Director.” https://businessday.ng/companies/article/wema-bank-plc-appoints-yewande-zaccheaus-as-non-executive-director/
BusinessDay. “Eventful Appoints New CEO as Founder Steps Down.” https://businessday.ng/news/article/eventful-appoints-new-ceo-as-founder-steps-down/
ShockNG. “Exclusive Conversation with Mrs. Yewande Zaccheaus, Executive Producer of The Wait.” https://shockng.com/exclusive-conversation-with-mrs-yewande-zacchaeus-executive-producer-of-the-wait/
Technext24. “‘The Wait’ Brings the Pain of Many Nigerian Women to the Fore.” Omoleye Omoruyi. January 30, 2023. https://technext24.com
Deeds Magazine. “Ireti Zaccheaus: Tastemaker, Curator, Architect of Street Souk.” Oluwalana Ajayi. https://www.deedsmag.com/stories/ireti-zaccheaus-tastemaker-curator-architect-of-street-souk
BellaNaija. “Enrol for the Event Management Training with Yewande Zaccheaus, CEO of Eventful.” July 2015. https://www.bellanaija.com/2015/07/enrol-for-the-event-management-training-with-yewande-zaccheaus-ceo-of-eventful-first-15-to-register-pay-get-15-discount/
Yewande Zaccheaus — The Platform Nigeria (Speech). https://youtu.be/feuasWBD0iw
Arise News Interview with Yewande Zaccheaus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leAM7hdHYDM
Yewande Zaccheaus and Ireti Zaccheaus — Interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WslTcuqv5M