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The University is managed by the senior Leadership team headed by the President/Vice Chancellor. The management team is responsible for the University overall leadership and management of the financial, academic and non-academic affairs of the university.
Jim Ovia, dubbed the “Godfather of Banking” by Forbes Africa, earned this title by building Nigeria’s largest bank. Ranked 325th in the world (The Banker, Top 1000 World Banks, 2016), Zenith Bank has over $16bn in assets today across over 300 branches in Nigeria, with a strategic international presence in the UK, Dubai, China, Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. He had always instilled a high level of corporate governance across the Bank; enabling it to achieve a $850m GDR listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2013. In 2017, the Bank issued a $500m Eurobond that was four times oversubscribed and priced better than the equivalent home country sovereign bond.
As the Chairman of Prudential Zenith Life Assurance Limited, he oversaw the landmark partnership of Prudential UK; one of the world’s largest life assurance companies and Zenith Life – Nigeria’s fastest growing life assurance company. He is currently the Chairman and majority shareholder of Zenith General Insurance Limited; Nigeria’s most profitable general insurance company. An avid fan of iconic architecture, he developed the Civic Centre and Aquamarine Boat Club to exploit Nigeria’s burgeoning hospitality sector. Adjacent to this, he built the Civic Towers, a 15 story office block that colloquially is referred to as Nigeria’s “Empire State Building”. Driven by the role that technology could play in Nigeria; he established Cyberspace Limited to provide internet services and Visafone Communications Limited to provide telecom services. The latter was sold to MTN, Africa’s largest telco, for an undisclosed sum in 2015.
Realizing the importance that education played in his success, he established the Jim Ovia Foundation. To date over 1,500 students have been provided with university scholarships. Recognizing the gap in high quality secondary education, the Jim Ovia Foundation established James Hope College in his hometown of Agbor, Delta State; a co-educational boarding school that provides scholarships for over 50% of its pupils.
Jim Ovia’s contribution to the Nigerian economy has been recognized by successive governments; he was conferred with the national awards of Member Federal Republic (MFR, 2000) and Commander of the Order of Niger (CON, 2011). He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School (OPM), University of Louisiana (MBA) and Southern University, Louisiana (B.Sc).
Mrs. Kay Ovia is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cyberspace Limited, a leading software engineering company in Lagos. She is also the MD/CEO of Quantum Markets Limited. She also sits on the Board of several organisations.
She is a businesswoman with a strong commitment to philanthropy. She has dedicated unprecedented resources to charity especially to the less privileged and underserved youths.
Her love and passion for youth and education has led her to support a number of Nigerian youths through their tertiary education by means of scholarship awards.
Mrs. Kay Ovia is an alumni of Enugu State University of Technology (ESUT) where she holds an MBA degree in Management. Kay is married to Jim Ovia and blessed with children.
Professor Chukuka S. Enwemeka is the Provost and Senior Vice President of San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA. Before joining San Diego State University on July 1, 2014, he served for five years as Distinguished Professor and Dean of the College of Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and for over six years as Professor and Dean, of the School of Health Professions, New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, New York. He was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas from March 1, 1993 to February 28, 2003.
Prior to his appointment at the University of Kansas, he served as Associate Professor of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, and Associate Director of Physical Therapy at the University of Miami’s School of Medicine, Florida. Prof. Enwemeka also held a joint appointment as Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy, Cellular and Structural Biology, and Physiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas.
In addition to his academic appointment, Prof. Enwemeka has served on numerous non-profit and for-profit corporate boards. Currently, he is a Non-Executive Director of Zenith Bank, Plc, Lagos, and a Trustee of California Western School of Law, San Diego, California.
He earned his Ph.D. from New York University (NYU), and did his post-doctoral research training at NYU’s Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. Dr. Enwemeka received his M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California and the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, respectively. He is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine and a Fellow of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery.
As a researcher, Professor Enwemeka is one of the foremost authorities in the use of lasers and LEDs for therapeutic purposes. He is known for using near infrared lasers and monochromatic light sources, to stimulate tissue repair in experimental models of soft tissue injury and clinical cases of chronic ulcers that failed to respond to other forms of treatment. In groundbreaking experiments, he and his team pioneered the use of blue LEDs to effectively kill a wide range of deadly bacteria; including drug-resistant strains of bacteria.
As an international figure, he held the Presidency of the World Association for Laser Therapy (WALT) from 1998 to 2000, and served as founder and pioneer chairman of the North American Association for Laser Therapy (NAALT) from 2000 to 2006. His academic life has taken him to thirty-nine countries either as a visiting professor, invited presenter, keynote speaker, visiting scholar, or as an invited guest of other universities world-wide.
His passion for educational excellence led him to active membership and involvement with numerous international learned societies, philanthropic organisations and fellowships including Physiological Society of London, Nigerian Society of Nephrology and the American Heart Association. Apart from teaching in Nigeria, Professor Obika was a Visiting Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, USA and taught at the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School of the University of London.
