Axipro has appointed Ikponke Godwin, CISM, as Principal Advisor. She joins from EY and brings a profile that is genuinely rare in this space: deep technical security experience and mature governance expertise, built in parallel rather than one after the other.
Ikponke spent over a year at EY as Senior Cybersecurity Consultant for West Africa, advising enterprise clients across security operations, GRC, and digital transformation. Before that, nearly two years at PwC Nigeria as both Associate Cybersecurity Specialist and Penetration Tester, where she worked across vulnerability assessment, framework implementation, and technical risk analysis. Most recently, she completed a secondment at Flutterwave as GRC Analyst, where she led an enterprise gap assessment using NIST CSF 2.0, co-developed a risk-based remediation roadmap, built out risk taxonomies, and used Drata to automate compliance workflows across one of Africa’s most closely-watched fintech platforms.
That combination of offensive security work and governance programme delivery is what makes her appointment significant. Many practitioners develop in one direction or the other. Ikponke has done both, and the combination shapes how she approaches client problems: starting with what could actually go wrong, not just what the framework says should be documented.
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She holds the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) designation and has hands-on experience across penetration testing, SIEM operations, third-party risk management, and security policy development. She has also worked as a Cybersecurity Instructor, which speaks to how clearly she can communicate complex topics to teams who are not security specialists.
Ikponke on joining Axipro: “What drew me here is the combination of ambition and precision. The firm is growing fast but has not traded rigour for speed. I want to build on that.”
As Principal Advisor, Ikponke will work with enterprise and mid-market clients on complex compliance engagements, technical security assessments, and GRC transformation programmes. She is based in Lagos, Nigeria.
We’re glad to have her.
