Jim Ovia is very romantic- Wife opens up.

The kids mill around her as their eyes light up with excitement and appreciation. She reaches out to them by the hand one by one –touching a cheek here, patting a head there. She looks at the little, dainty girl and stoops to give her a warm hug. Her chest heaves with joy and fulfillment. As the kids leave, she reaches out for mobile gadget, and ticks off all the names –again, she has been able to pay the school fees of these children. Not her biological children though. Tears of anticipation well up glistening eyes, as she wonders if there’s something more she can do for the less privileged children. Her passion soon betrays her as she set up a dynamic, one of a kind kids support programme, Star Rising Talent Hunt. Meet the initiator of this long-term vision, Kay Ovia. Kay is the Chief Executive Officer of Quantum Markets and the darling wife of Jim Ovia, the Zenith Bank Chairman. Kay loves kids and she is doing everything within and outside her power to give hopes, to give a bright future to disadvantaged kids through her talent hunt project. She shares with Omolola Itayemi, what tickles her fancy, how far she intends to take her Star Rising project, her dreams as a child, and that the very busy Jim Ovia that many know is a very romantic man
You could have done any other thing, why this?
It is a passion that I have had over the years. I actually found out that through this passion I can help children. I have been helping some kids by paying their tuition. I also do mentoring. I do have a lot of children on my sponsorship list. I learnt that from my husband –he has the Jim Ovia Foundation; a youth empowerment programme. You give a child a handout, you might not see that child for the next two years till they need another handout or they need another school fees being paid and I thought to myself, what will be permanent in these children’s lives, there has to be a permanent solution out there.  Because I’m a very tenacious person, and I’m always pushing my children, telling them ‘You have to excel. You have to succeed.’ I was always focused on the academics, ignoring non-academics. But that has changed and you should ask me how?
How?
I decided to look at non-academics because there is so much talent around us. I organise a party every year for orphanages at my house. The children swim, dance and put on a show. Last year was no different but I was amazed at the raw talent some of these children displayed and I said to myself, ‘Come February, I’m going to initiate my own non-governmental organisation that will give these children some kind of hope.’ You know, my kids or kids of other people like myself in Nigeria don’t need to be pushed. A lot of these children have talents. But, they don’t know where to go, how to go about it or who will even them. It’s just a passion I have for children. Children need to be given a chance and where they can’t or their parents cannot afford to give them that chance, people like us who have a little bit of spare change should help. A child came to me and said, ‘Oh aunty, I would really like to sing, do you know this person?’ And I said, I would try but I can’t do that for just one person. So why I don’t I spread it out, touch as many lives as I can as quickly as possible because children are growing fast and in the next two to five years they’ll be adults in the job market. I believe if one child has been taught how to sing and can sing very well, then that child does it for life and has started to earn a living. Or if a child can dance, or a child is brilliant, he needs to be nurtured positively. I often come across individuals abroad who are keen about giving a helping hand to kids. They come to me, saying, ‘Can you please give us names of children that we can sponsor in schools in Nigeria? Or, do you have any child that is gifted in this or that area?’ Therefore, considering the bundle of talents these children have, I came about the name, Star Rising. The children are stars. They are stars and on the rise.
What exactly is the rationale behind the Star Rising talent hunt project?
The rationale behind the project like I said is to support children with various talents who have nowhere to turn to for help. There is a team of trainers that are providing talent development classes. To make our selections, we did not go to schools meant for the rich and famous. We look out for kids who are less privileged. These are our targets and that is why we have been going to government schools and the orphanages. You will be amazed at the raw talents that we found in these schools. And I know that the judges would select the best. Our focus right now is the teenagers, especially those in upper secondary schools.
Do you plan to go to the streets?
No, we don’t intend to go the streets. Right now we have a list of 25 schools and that list includes government schools and orphanages. We will extract the raw talent from those places and hopefully, we will get started at the end of the day.
As you know there are similar projects like yours being carried out by different individuals and organisations, what makes yours different?
Star Rising is a long-term vision; it is not just a one-off thing where only prizes are given. We plan to make the children arm themselves with adequate knowledge to restore what some of them have lost as well as make them believe in themselves. Unlike most talent hunt projects that attract a fee, Star Rising Talent Hunt is free. It is not to make money. The entry and audition is totally free and that is what happened when we had the maiden edition of out talent hunt in November 2014 and it was a success. It is an opportunity to come and have an enabling environment to showcase your talent. We are here to mentor and coach them and at the end of the day they would become great patriots for the nation. In addition, the talent hunt includes an academic and mental exercise for students in senior secondary schools. Contestants will be quizzed on subjects like mathematics, English, general knowledge, current global affairs and the sciences. We are going to discover, hone and nurture God-given talents. This would be done through free counselling and mentoring programmes for children within the age bracket of seven to 17. Sadly, a number of projects people have for children are actually for teenagers. That’s another difference.
How far do you intend to take Star Rising?
I intend to take it as far as possible. It’s a passion I have and now that I have found an avenue to help children, I will. Before this, it was just about paying school fees for one child or the other because I do have a lot of children on my sponsorship list. It’s a life at a time, that’s what I believe. If I touch five children this year, touch another five next year and it grows from there and by the time we have one centre open, we intend to enrol about 200 kids at the centre. The centre will afford them after-school activities. We are going to hopefully have a studio, a library; and we would have resource persons from abroad who would coach them in the areas of singing and dancing. In addition, we would also be working with celebrities in Nigeria and it would give us a total package and hopefully next year, we will get 100 kids that are good to go.
We have the likes of Zuriel Oduwole and Malala Yousof today, is this where you are taking these children to?
No, you see Malala today, she is not a singer. She is not a dancer but she is an orator, she talks and people listen, adults listen. If I have a child like that I know I would push that child far. Here, I am not talking about my biological children. Of course, I have children who can speak very well for themselves. Children need to be able to say what’s on their mind. They need to be able to say, ‘OK, this is my God-given talent, I want to show the world. This is my dream; I want to be up there.’ It’s not five minutes of glory or fifteen minutes of fame.
Since you started your project in February last year, what have been the challenges or have things been all rosy?
No, it hasn’t been easy because every other person involved in this project with me has a day-time job. This is our hobby –let me put it like that. Every member of the team has a job they are doing, so I had to pull them out of their various jobs to assist me. Some of them I didn’t know before. I had to find a way to approach them to say and involve them in the project. They all share the same passion with me.
When you are not thinking about Star Rising, what are you thinking about?
I am thinking about my husband and children.
You seem to have a special connection with children. What are your thoughts about the Chibok schoolgirls who were kidnapped from their school hostel in April last year?
It’s a very heartfelt problem. One cannot go a day without thinking what has become of them and the only thing we can do right now is to pray. In all circumstances, we can only pray that one day, mothers will hold their children, fathers will hold their daughters, and siblings will hold their sisters. We are praying that they come back and at some point we will have a cause to rejoice.
As a child, what were your dreams?
I wanted to be an artist. I was a left-handed artist but my father said, ‘No, you have to go and study finance, you cannot be an artist.’ Who knows if I had become an artist maybe I would be somebody like Michelangelo. I’ll be doing paintings all over the world. My dad was a lawyer, so I think at that time –after getting over being an artist –I wanted to be a lawyer. But I am a person that likes to take everything on, so the easier thing for me to do was to just do the maths and get it over and done with and that’s why I chose finance.
Children are constantly victims when it comes to molestation especially from caregivers, how do you hope to avoid this?
Have you heard of a CRB? All our people are going to be vetted. We have to vet them. As much as possible they would go through some kind of process; when we interview people who will work with the kids, we would have a psychologist on the board. You can only do so much but I know God will do the rest. We won’t get people that will harm these kids because that’s something I will not tolerate. I mean if you have closed-circuit television (CCTV) everywhere in every room that will caution people to behave. If they have any bad intention, that will put them in check. All these measures will be put in place. If I cannot leave my child with anyone, I will definitely not leave somebody else’s child with the person. More so, we have a rich crop of professionals as part of my team; Kachi Onyeagwu, Punam Dani, Ngozi Eze, Kay Ovia, Abi Ayoku and Badia Adebola “Illrymz” Olowu.
Is sports talent –like football –included in the project?
We have to start from somewhere. I don’t know enough footballers; maybe, if you can introduce me to a couple of footballers that want to be on our team, by next year, we will put them on and they can help mentor these children.
Talent cannot be groomed without mentors, how do you intend to do this?
We will be contacting mentors in different fields. We will let them know we have this child, excellent at this, please take the child on, mentor the child. Some of the people coming to sing are going to be mentors for our children. We will ask these mentors to do them an email, give them the heads up, show them the way because that’s the only way people can learn and from time to time, we will do checkups. We will ask the children, ‘Ok, what has your mentor said? ‘How far have you gone? What do you think you can do now? Have you had classes? We will provide funds for the classes if they need to go, even if they need to be done outside the country. If a child gets a sponsor out of the country, I am ready to go hat-in-hand begging because not that I have the fund, but I will implore people I know to help. I will go like, ‘Please I have this child, fantastic singer that can bring the house down with his voice. What can you do to help me mentor this child?’ Il Rhymz is a producer and entertainer; he’s ready to mentor these children. We also have Yinka Davies, Mandy, Sasha P and others on board. It is people like this we hope to surround ourselves with the kids because we have fantastic talents already out there in Nigeria. So by the time we harness this talents together, the children will hopefully be somebody like them in the future.
You are a beautiful woman; do you have any strict beauty regiment?
It is nothing really. If you are diligent with your hygiene then you would be beautiful. Hygiene, they say, is next to godliness. Then you have to be good on the inside, have the word of God in you and then everything would be great. That is one thing I have told my children. You don’t have to be beautiful for the sake of being beautiful or want to be like the next Miss World. The truth is that beauty comes from within. It includes your eating healthy, good hygiene and doing the right thing.
How will you describe your style?
My style is simple. A style as in the project, style as in what I do for a living, style as in me. (Laughs) There is really not much to it; believe it or not I am over 50. Sometimes one wakes up in the morning and the bones are not working but you ask God, God please give me the grace to keep on going on.
You are married to one of Nigeria’s top bankers and Chairman of Zenith Bank, Jim Ovia, do you believe Nigerian men are romantic especially the very busy ones like your husband?
I would say that my husband is very romantic. He doesn’t miss my birthday or any other important date. Even when I am out of the country, you can be sure that he is coming with a massive bunch of roses. Women need to teach their men how to be romantic. A man may not be naturally romantic but you can guide him. You need to step up the game