Mokutima Ajileye is the Managing Director at Procter & Gamble Nigeria. She is the first female and first Nigerian in the history of the organisation to lead in Nigeria.
As Managing Director, she is responsible for the entire Nigeria business with cross-functional responsibilities that includes delivering the operating TSR metrics of turnover, profit, cash, market share, establishing and sustaining right governance structure to ensure a sustainable business, leading productivity projects to deliver on cash targets and supply chain optimisation.
Others include go-to-market responsibilities to deliver on sales targets including distributor operations, external stakeholder engagement (government and regulatory bodies) to enable seamless business operations and developing a world-class organisation, including talent development and career planning for all Nigeria employees.
Ajileye is a highly experienced marketing and business leader with 18 years of vast accomplishments growing businesses based on astute strategic planning and problem-solving competencies. She has built brands across developing and developed regions (India, Middle East, Africa, and Europe), developed disruptive forms in mature product categories, and led world-class teams.
Mokutima has consistently delivered revenue, profit, and market share growth while developing capabilities and talents within the organisation. She has an entrepreneurial mind-set, and is comfortable with ambiguity, which has enabled her to take on start-up roles and build the organisation from scratch.
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For Mokutima, there are three key pillars that has kept P&G, and she says the first is the people, because people are the bedrock of what they do, the second is innovation because at P&G, innovation is their lifeblood, since it keeps them going as a company. The third are their citizenship programmes.
On local employee inclusion, she stated that “We have moved from 60-40 split of expert and locals to 100 percent local employees, and a 50-50 split at the managerial level.” She said.
On their ‘Always Keeping Girls in School’ programme, Ajileye revealed that it commenced in 2009, and its core pillars includes education, where they educate both boys and girls. There is also the provision of training materials for school counselors who the girls can go to if they have questions. The third pillar she says is access, because at the end of the day, after the education, the children need to stay in school during their period days, so they give one year supply of sanitary pads to schools that P&G has the programme with every year. They do this because some girls miss school because they do not have sanitary protection. “The statistics is daunting. We do this to end period poverty. It is beyond being a CSR but should be a strategic imperative for organisations and communities, it actually develops the communities and organisation too”. Mokutima stated.
