Ultimate Health MD, Lekan Ewenla, Bags African HMO CEO Award

The Managing Director of Ultimate Health Management Services, Otunba Lekan Ewenla, has won the African Health Maintenance Organisation Chief Executive Officer Leadership Award for 2026.

According to the organisers of the annual award, the African CEO Leadership Award aims to identify, validate, celebrate, and amplify “the impact of Africa’s most transformative Chief Executives and Senior Business Leaders.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Ultimate Health’s Ewenla said the award recognised his organisation’s outstanding performance in the health insurance industry, driven by strong innovation, professionalism, and customer satisfaction.

He stated, “We recognise 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 intended to make health care affordable and accessible to approximately 75 per cent of Nigerians in the informal sector. Right now, we are rolling out a new service-level agreement with NHIA-accredited Health Care Facilities across the country, and it is essentially the regulator’s standard template.

“We are also planning an interactive and sensitisation session with service providers to directly interface with the regulator’s representatives and the target market in attendance, and clarify issues,” he said.

Commending President Bola Tinubu’s administration for its commitment to improving the country’s poor health indices and making health insurance work better for Nigerians, the CEO noted that the President has mandated that an average of 50 million Nigerians be enrolled in the programme.

“The President backed it up with adequate funding and political will, and mandated that all small, medium, and large organisations enrol and be issued a compliance certificate by the National Health Insurance Authority. The issued compliance certificate will, moving forward, form part of the requirements for transactions or benefits from the Government across the nation,” he said.

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

We are going to realign the volumes of lives we have with the facilities we have signed an 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 Lagos in July, adding that the majority of leaders in the informal sector and small- and medium-scale business owners will be part of the program. He said that management is working to arrange a meeting with the Iyaloja-General of Nigeria, Chief Mrs Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, to secure the participation and enrolment of market men and women in the program. The same goes for the leadership of spare parts dealers, GSM Village leaders, Computer 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 a flexible and incentive-driven enrolment process to drive volume on this program, as we intend to lead in driving the change that we desire for the health insurance in the country.