Except there were last minute changes, the Director General of the Nigeria Insurers Association (NIA) Mr. Ezekiel Oyinbo Chiejina will be stepping aside from the saddle as the chief executive officer of the 38 year old association.

Although rumour of his planned resignation from the office which he inherited in 2003 has been making the rounds for some time now, the chairman of NIA Mr. Wole Oshin had last week in Lagos let the cat out of the bag when he told delegates to the association’s annual general meeting that the current DG will not be around when the meeting will hold next year.

Although Mr. Oshin did not give details of Mr. Chiejina’s scheduled resignation, he said that it was necessary that he puts the association on notice.

Sources close to the NIA secretariat said last week that Mr. Chiejina, a lawyer and Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute of both London and Nigeria with specialization in the life branch of the business may be pulling out from the organization within the forth quarter of the year. Our source had pointed at the issue of age as perhaps constituting the major reason for the scheduled stepping aside considering that Mr. Chiejina has already turned 60 years.

Born February 13, 1948 at Ubulu-Uku, Aniocha local government area of Delta state, Mr. Chiejina joined NIA in 2002 as the deputy director general under studying the then chief executive officer Chief "Funmi Adeyemi.

After what looked like a one year internship, Ezekiel was in 2003 uplifted as the substantive director general upon the retirement of his former boss.

Mr. Chiejina is one of the few insurance practitioners in the market who will lay claims to knowing a little beat of everything in the business.

His carrier in insurance dated back to his joining NICON Insurance Corporation from where he rose to various management positions.

He was the pioneer chief executive officer of the then Rescue Insurance Company, Calabar.

A regular contributor to insurance journals with emphasis on life and annuities, Mr. Chiejina resigned as the managing director of Oasis Insurance Plc to join Industrial and General Insurance (IGI) as a director, his last employment before NIA.

Considered a b ridge builder due to his capacity to link the old breed practitioners with the new generation officers, Mr. Chiejina has during his reign as the chief executive officer of NIA succeeded in extracting greater commitment from wider spectrum of the assocition’s membership.