Meet Jim Ovia, newly appointed NELFUND chairman

President Bola Tinubu, on Friday, approved the appointment of renowned banker and businessman, Jim Ovia, as the Chairman of the Board of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund.

He was born in 1951 into the large family of Obi Olihe of Agbor-Obi, in what is now Agbor, Delta State.

His father died when he was four and older siblings helped support their mother and the family.

One elder brother paid for his early education. Ovia moved to Lagos to live with that brother and started work as a clerk in a bank.

After three years, he traveled to the United States for college and graduate school, earning a B.Sc. degree in Business Administration from Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana (1977), and an MBA from the University of Louisiana, Monroe, in 1979.

He is also an alumnus of Harvard Business School.

In 2018 Ovia published what he described as an “entrepreneurial manual”, Africa Rise and Shine.

His memoir also tells about his early life, his business career and how he developed Zenith Bank and other related interests with a surfeit of efforts and benefaction towards nurturing and empowering young Nigerians.