Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion

Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion is a Nigerian businessman whose institution-building activities have extended into education, with Igbinedion University Okada representing his most consequential contribution to Nigeria's private higher-education sector. In March 1995, he chaired the planning committee established to develop the Igbinedion University project, bringing together academics, university administrators and other professionals to formulate the institution's academic framework. Four years later, the Federal Government issued Certificate No. 01 establishing the university, which was presented to Igbinedion on 10 May 1999. The university subsequently commenced its first academic session in 1999/2000.
The significance of Igbinedion's role is therefore not simply that he founded a university, but that he established one of the first privately founded institutions to enter Nigeria's university system when private participation in higher education was emerging as a new institutional model.