Ultimate Health MD, Lekan Ewenla, Bags African HMO CEO Award 2026 – THISDAYLIVE

The Managing Director of Ultimate Health Management Services, Otunba Lekan Ewenla, has won the African Health Maintenance Organization Chief Executive Officer Leadership Award for 2026.
According to the organizers of the yearly award, the African CEO Leadership Award is aimed at identifying, validating, celebrating and amplifying “the impact of Africa’s most transformative Chief Executives and Senior Business Leaders.”

Ewenla, in an interview with journalists on Monday, said the award was in recognition of the outstanding performance of his organization in the health insurance industry, which is driven with strong innovation professionalism and customer satisfaction.

He stated, “We recognize the fact that the health insurance is designed to make healthcare affordable, accessible and equitable to all Nigerians and we have been strongly committed to achieving that objective with strong collaboration with critical stakeholders like the regulator, the National Health Insurance Authority and the network of accredited healthcare facilities.

Ewenla explained, “Recently, the management of Ultimate Health HMO adopted the Group, Individual and Family Social Health Insurance Program – GIFSHIP for direct exposure to the operators in the informal sector and the operators of small and medium scale businesses in the country. This step was to make health care affordable and accessible to approximately 75 percent of Nigerians operating in the informal sector.

“Right now, we are rolling out new service level agreement with the NHIA accredited Health Care Facilities across the country and this agreement is basically the regulators standard template. We are also planning an interactive and sensitization session with the services providers to directly interface and clarify issues with the representatives of the regulator and the target market in attendance.”

Commending President Bola Tinubu’s administration for its commitment to changing the country’s poor health indices and making health insurance work better for Nigerians, the CEO mentioned that the President has mandated that an average of 50 million Nigerians should be enrolled in the program and the President backed it up with adequate funding and political will as he also mandated that all small, medium and large organizations should enroll and be issued compliance certificate by the National Health Insurance Authority. The issued compliance certificate moving forward will form part of the requirements for transactions or benefits from the government across the nation.

He further explained that Ultimate Health HMO will deploy strategic and systematic operational framework to achieve measurable health outcomes for the enrollees in the U-Health GIFSHIP focusing at driving volume for primary providers in accordance with actuarial recommendations.

“We are going to realign the volumes of lives we have with the facilities we have signed agreement with to guarantee the provision of qualitative services at times. We are exposing those with low enrollees to our enrollees we are bringing into the scheme,” the CEO added.

Ewenla disclosed that Ultimate Health would host a meeting for stakeholders in July in Lagos, adding that majority of the leaders in the informal sector and the small and medium scale business owners will be part of the program.
He said that the management is working towards meeting with the Iyaloja-General of Nigeria, Chief Mrs. Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, for the participation and enrolment of market men and women in the program. Same goes for the leadership of spare parts dealers, GSM Villages leaders, Computers Vendors and others.

Ewenla stated, “The reason for reaching out to her is to partner with her to enhance the well-being of those market men and women across the country because they are very large and they need to be catered for.

“We are going to deploy flexible and incentive driven enrolment process to drive volume on this program as our intention is to lead in driving the change that we desire for the health insurance in the country.”