“Professionals, Not Chance, Will Fulfill Nigeria’s Promise, says Samuel Orekoya

In a society where many professionals are advised to “pick a lane,” Orekoya has chosen instead to build intersections. A legal practitioner by training and a civic mobiliser by instinct, he is fast becoming one of Nigeria’s versatile and impactful young voices across law, governance, civil society, and faith-based leadership.

Currently Head of Legal and Board Secretary at the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN), Orekoya plays a critical role in managing the legal Unit, ensuring Legal Security of the Institute’s multi-million-dollar health grants. But this role, significant as it is, only scratches the surface. He also leads a private commercial and tech law firm, manages a consulting and advisory firm, and maintains a growing influence in youth empowerment initiatives and civic advocacy.

“I like to think of myself as a bridge between boardrooms and street corners,” he says, explaining a professional trajectory that cuts across global legal advisory, grassroots voter registration, and faith-based media outreach.
As founder of the Lux Mundi Leadership Foundation, Orekoya has turned his attention to the youth—creating entrepreneurship boot camps, organizing loan-readiness clinics, and preparing for a landmark three-day summit in Lagos designed to empower thousands of young Nigerians through trainings on entrepreneurship, investment, grants and soft loans. His civil society initiative, InsideNigeria, has drawn praise for practical interventions, most notably by sponsoring permanent voter card registrations for 1,000 previously unregistered Nigerians.

At Christ Image Assembly, a fast-growing Pentecostal ministry with congregations in eight countries, Orekoya wears two hats— Co-National Youth Administrator and National Head of Media. Under his leadership, the ministry now streams youth-oriented faith content across six countries through a broadcasting platform he helped to architect.
His experience isn’t limited to law and faith.

Orekoya consults for Multi-nationals and International Business companies, and also, the maritime-logistics start-up Innovative Connections International, currently exploring feeder-max and Panamax vessel acquisitions for a Lagos–Rotterdam route—an ambitious project that reflects Orekoya’s global thinking. With academic and professional exposure in the United Kingdom, China, and the United States, he brings a rare global-local perspective to Nigerian development challenges.

“If you fix education but ignore access to finance, you stifle the very graduates you produce,” he explains. “If you preach morality without teaching civic rights, you create obedient victims. I’m simply weaving the strands together’
Asked why he refuses to specialize narrowly; he recalls childhood memories of his parents’ entrepreneurial efforts to secure multiple sources of income to fund neighbourhood scholarships. “I learnt early that Nigeria’s problems are inter-locking,” he says. “You can’t afford to address one issue in isolation.”

Whether in courtrooms, boardrooms, or community halls, Samuel Oluwatosin Orekoya is charting a new course for civic-minded leadership in Nigeria—one that refuses to choose between competence and compassion, between governance and grassroots, or between law and faith. In a nation yearning for transformation, his blend of legal insight, civic action, and visionary systems-building may offer just the kind of disruption the country needs