- Born in a village in Ondo State in mid 1970s.
- Almost denied admission into primary school at 5 because he was small and his left hand could not touch the right ear.
- Accepted only because his twin sister’s hand could do. And they were born same day. You can’t say Kehinde is ripe for primary education and not Taiye born on same day.
- He was consistently the best student in his class through primary and secondary schools.
- Mostly struggled to pay the N50 school fees but weekend farm work helped. Got paid N5-N10 per weekend of farm work.
- Then the struggle to pay the big fee for WAEC exam – N495. Needed to do at least 6 months of farm support before being able to raise that. Dropping out looked imminent.
- Until his village’s parapo group (association of indigenes of his village working in Ajaokuta Steel) came to his school and said they wanted to give scholarship to the best student, which happened to be him. That was how he funded WAEC and avoided extra year or outright dropout.
- Passed WAEC in flying colours.
- Like many village kids, had no clue of what next.
- An uncle advised the family: let this boy go for social sciences and write an exam called ICAN. Taiwo said that was the first time he heard about ICAN in his life.
- He would write UME, choose Accounting in Ife and Unilag, score circa 220 but rarher than being given Accounting, Ife and Lag would give him Estate Management or Economics Education. He would reject them: Accounting or nothing.
- Then he settled for a polytechnic – Ado Ekiti – which gave him Accounting that he wanted.
- That was the beginning of his journey into the profession that would give him fame (& 💰)
- During his ND in Ado, he registered for ICAN simultaneously, having sold his alloted Jambite hostel bedspace to raise fund to register for ICAN.
- After his HND, he came to Lagos for IT. He extended his IT to raise more funds to finance his ICAN exam.
- Got admission into Yabatech for his HND. Won prize at penultimate level of his ICAN exams. Awarded scholarship by his ICAN tuition center for final exam.
- Qualified as a chartered accountant in 1999. Got his HND in 2000.
- So what next? The journey to PwC
- Staying in Surulere, a friend told him one firm called PwC would be organizing job test for fresh grads in few days’ time.
- What’s PwC? Well, he decided to follow the friend to the test center and also presented himself for the open test. PwC office was also in Surulere.
- He passed. The friend did not.
- As he hadn’t served, he couldn’t be offered full employment. So they asked him to serve with them.
- He resumed as a corps member in the firm in 2001.
- The rest is history. By 2009, less than 8 years, he had risen from a corps member in the firm to being a partner (compare Executive Director in a multinational).
- Been a partner for the past 14 years, rising further to become Tax Leader for the entire PwC in Africa.
- From that village boy tilling the soil to pay school fees in the early to late 1980s, he became a polished, extremely smart and articulate executive, and arguably the face of PwC (one of the world’s top 4 accounting/tax firms) in Nigeria, and the most visible voice in fiscal policy analysis in Nigeria.
- Today, he is the chairman of the Presidential Tax Reform Committee, a team poised to transform Nigeria’s tax system and set the country on the path to greatness alongside the world’s leading nations.
Despite these feats, he remains a very humble gentleman with no airs, no primitive accumulation, and always willing to support other people. And a patriot.
