There are institutions whose decline happens so gradually that, one day, the public simply wakes up to a painful conclusion: what used to be a national pillar has become a national worry.

The National Investment Bank Plc, founded as a strategic vehicle to finance Ghana’s development ambitions, found itself in that exact place. For years, the Bank’s story was told in worried whispers: persistent operational strain, capital weakness, governance pressures, and the kind of uncertainty that makes customers cautious and staff weary.

By mid-2024, public reporting around the Bank’s condition was no longer a matter of rumor; it entered the national conversation with hard numbers and sober commentary, capital adequacy had deteriorated sharply, and the Bank was described in the press as facing persistent losses, elevated non-performing loans, and internal control weaknesses, with its capital adequacy ratio reported at negative 53.13% by June 2024—far below the regulatory minimum referenced in those reports.

When an institution reaches that stage, recovery is not achieved by slogans. It requires credible capital, yes, but just as importantly, it requires credibility of leadership: the rare kind that can stabilise confidence, mobilise internal discipline, rebuild external trust, and produce measurable results quickly enough to stop the bleeding yet thoughtfully enough to prevent relapse.

That is why the appointment of Chief Dr Doli-Wura Awushi Abdul-Malik Seidu Zakaria as Managing Director became a turning point that observers across banking and public life have watched with keen interest. The announcement of his appointment was carried by Ghanaian media in early February 2025, reporting that he was selected to lead the Bank at a moment of deep national concern about the fate of key state financial institutions.

What makes the “Chief Doliwura factor” compelling is that it is not built only on office, or title, or ceremonial respect. It is built on the convergence of three power sources that rarely sit in one person at the same time: professional depth, academic formation, and social legitimacy. Public profiles of Chief Doliwura describe him as a chartered accountant, a PhD holder, and a seasoned governance and public financial management professional, someone whose expertise is not merely theoretical but applied across years of institutional engagement.

This matters because failing institutions do not need leaders who “mean well”; they need leaders who know what levers to pull, what standards to enforce, and what cultural shift must be engineered to make reforms stick.

Upon taking the reins, the most striking element of the turnaround was the speed with which the Bank moved from public anxiety to public evidence of stabilisation.

In his own address to eminent traditional leaders during a visit to Cedi House, Chief Doliwura summarised what he met on arrival: a daunting situation, heavy expectations, and a Bank in urgent need of discipline and renewed purpose. Yet, within about a year, the Bank’s internal culture, operational rhythm, and external confidence began to change in ways that were not only felt, but measured.

He began where lasting reform always begins: with the people who must carry it. In the same speech, he reported a bold and morale-restoring intervention, a 62% upward adjustment of salaries, alongside improved working conditions, provision of modern tools and equipment, and structured training and retraining.

He also emphasised a leadership standard that signals seriousness: executive management embracing professional development, with nine executives (including himself) becoming members of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, reflecting a culture shift toward competence, discipline, and professional pride. In a distressed institution, this is not a minor point. When staff feel abandoned, they protect themselves. When staff feel seen, equipped, and held to clear standards, they build the institution as though it belongs to them, because it begins to.

But the deeper hallmark of his leadership was not simply improved welfare; it was the restoration of a performance culture, one that rewards excellence, enforces accountability, and breaks the invisible silos that quietly kill productivity in large organisations. He described an internal reset: collaboration replacing fragmentation, discipline embedded into operations, and a leadership culture that makes performance non-negotiable. This is exactly the kind of change that cannot be faked. It shows up, inevitably in the numbers.

And the numbers, in the NIB story, are the loudest witnesses.

Chief Doliwura disclosed that total deposits grew from GHS 6.4 billion in 2024 to over GHS 10.1 billion in 2025, a 57% growth, a level of deposit mobilisation that signals something far more important than marketing: it signals restored confidence.

Deposits do not rise at that rate when customers are afraid. They rise when people believe the institution is safe, improving, and led with competence. He further reported that total assets expanded from GHS 5.8 billion in 2024 to GHS 12.1 billion in 2025, representing 109% growth, a dramatic strengthening of the Bank’s balance sheet footprint in a single year.

Profitability, often the hardest hill for a struggling bank to climb, became the clearest symbol of the turnaround. He reported that the Bank recorded GHS 252 million profit before tax in 2025, compared to GHS 3 million in 2024, describing it as an 8,300% growth, not incremental improvement, but a decisive reversal that repositioned the Bank as a viable national asset.

When a bank moves from thin margins to strong profitability within one cycle, it reflects not luck, but a chain of decisions: cost control, risk management, improved collections, smarter asset deployment, tighter governance, and a sharper business model.

Equally important was the credibility that comes from transparency.

He emphasised that NIB published half-year financials in July 2025 after a long period in which such disclosure had not happened, and he pledged a clear timeline for publishing full-year financial statements. Independent reporting around the Bank echoed the significance of this step: public commentary in 2025 described NIB’s mid-year financial disclosure as its first in many years, framing it as a return to transparency after undercapitalization and distress. For a public-facing financial institution, transparency is not just compliance; it is reputation. And reputation, in banking, is currency.

Then came recapitalisation, an unavoidable pillar of the recovery story. Ghana’s Ministry of Finance had already signalled in 2024 that the government had earmarked significant resources toward recapitalising the Bank as part of restructuring and restoring viability.

Subsequent reporting in 2025 described the government’s recapitalisation actions, including cash and bonds, as part of efforts to put NIB on a stronger footing.

And in its December 2025 program review, the IMF noted that after delays, authorities had begun implementing NIB’s restructuring plan and injected cash and bonds to bring the Bank’s capital adequacy ratio into full compliance with the minimum requirement by end-May 2025, while also initiating governance and risk reforms to support viability going forward.

Chief Doliwura’s speech added a concrete dimension to this recapitalization arc, reporting that government injected GHS 1.476 billion in 2025, raising unimpaired capital above minimum requirements and moving the Bank’s capital adequacy ratio from negative 47% to positive 23% and then before the end of the year, the capital adequacy ratio had already lipped from 23% to 56.23% due to the hard work and the exceptional leadership of Chief Dr Doliwura.

Whether one looks at the recapitalisation through official statements, media reporting, or program reviews, one conclusion stands: the Bank’s survival and rebound required a capital solution, but the Bank’s revival required leadership capable of converting capital support into disciplined performance. Money can buy time; it cannot buy trust. Trust is earned by outcomes.

What truly elevates the NIB story, however, is that it was not framed as a private victory. Chief Doliwura repeatedly positioned the turnaround as institutional, collective, and values-driven, rooted in discipline, unity, and purpose.  In a country where institutions often suffer when leadership becomes personal, this insistence on shared ownership is not a public relations line; it is a governance philosophy. It tells staff, customers, and stakeholders that the mission is bigger than any one person, and that systems, not personalities, will carry the progress forward.

His local and international mobilisation acumen also showed in how he reconnected the institution to the centre of national influence and decision-making. He stated that NIB became connected to “over 70 per cent of key decision-makers” across public and private sectors, an assertion meant to communicate that the Bank was not only stabilizing internally, but regaining relevance externally.

That kind of stakeholder reach is not achieved by sending letters. It is achieved by credibility: leaders return calls when they believe the institution is serious again.

And credibility is inseparable from the man’s profile. Public biographies describe a leader formed by rigorous academic training and professional practice, chartered accountancy, public policy and administration doctoral study, and extensive experience in governance and financial management spaces.

Whether one meets him in the language of boardrooms or in the language of traditional authority, the through-line is the same: a temperament built for stewardship, not showmanship; for systems, not shortcuts; for measurable delivery, not vague promises.

This is why the NIB turnaround resonates beyond the banking sector. It speaks to every Ghanaian who has ever wondered whether state institutions can still work, whether public systems can still be fixed, and whether competence can still overcome inertia.

NIB’s journey, from a widely discussed distressed state, with reported capital weakness and operational concerns, to a period of recapitalisation, transparency restoration, deposit growth, asset expansion, and strong profit performance, has become a living example that decline is not destiny.

In the end, the “Chief Doliwura factor” is best understood not as charisma, but as capacity: the capacity to restore order where drift had become normal; to inspire belief where doubt had settled; to mobilise people and partners around a single institutional direction; and to translate reforms into numbers that even skeptics must respect.

The story of NIB’s recent chapter is therefore more than a corporate turnaround. It is a national reassurance, proof that when leadership is disciplined, professionally grounded, and socially legitimate, even a “sorry state” can be made into a success story, and even a troubled institution can become, once again, a national asset worth trusting.

By Sanusi Zankawah (PhD) Senior Research Fellow Africa Research and Consulting Centre (Arccentre)