About us
Nigerians connecting,
building tomorrow.
Arriving in this city on your own is harder than it needs to be. There are enough of us here now that nobody has to do it that way, which is why NIS exists.
Photographs · 2020 to 2026
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What we do
What the association does
01
We meet people at the beginning
Most of what NIS does happens in the first month someone is here: the police station, the bank, the flat, the hospital. It is dull work that people badly need doing.
02
We keep the community findable
There are coordinators at each university and members across every district, and the group still gets an answer at two in the morning when something has gone wrong.
03
We speak for Nigerians here
We are the ones who reply when peer associations across the Greater Bay Area, universities or other institutions need a single address to write to.
The executive committee
Six people,
all with day jobs.
Elected 2026. The board below is the association's own design.
Meet the teamNIS, 2026
The record
- Engr. Francis Okafor President Tech Lead, IDEMIA
Tech Lead at IDEMIA and Chairman of the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Afro-Tech Forum. Member of the Africa AI Council and a MIPAD (Most Influential People of African Descent) 2026 honoree. B.Eng, MA, PSEM. Young Achievers Award winner and Pride of Africa Awards recipient.
- Umezulike Glory Vice President Harbin Institute of Technology
Master's student at Harbin Institute of Technology studying urban planning. She holds a bachelor's degree in architecture, with an interest in place attachment and international student integration on an urban scale.
- Lawan Rabiu Secretary / Treasurer Shenzhen University
Cancer epigenetics researcher and PhD candidate at Shenzhen University. Shenzhen Topnotch Scholar 2025 awardee, CEO of Alwan Global Resources, and a member of AACR and SITC.
- Dr. Sunday Aboyeji Public Relations Officer CUHK-Shenzhen
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CUHK-Shenzhen and Shenzhen Longgang Otolaryngology Hospital. He holds a PhD in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems, with research interests in AI, machine learning, biomedical signal processing and healthcare analytics.
- Tolulope Oyemakinde Social Officer SIAT, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Researcher at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He holds an MSc in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems with research interests in neuroscience, human-machine interaction and biomedical AI.
- Aisha Bello Welfare Officer Harbin Institute of Technology
Master's student at Harbin Institute of Technology studying economics, and the founder and CEO of Splendors Kitchen, a culinary enterprise with operations across Nigeria and China.
School coordinators
Someone on your
campus already
did this.
Each coordinator is a student or researcher who has agreed to be the first person a new arrival can ask. They are unpaid volunteers rather than staff, and they still answer.
- Emmanuel Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen
- Izuchukwu Temilade Peking University
- Charles Shenzhen University
- Ann Imojara Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology
- Sunday Aboyeji Chinese University of Hong Kong
- Samuel Professionals
Studying somewhere not listed? Tell us. If there are Nigerians on your campus, there should be a coordinator on it too.
The coordinatorsNIS
Hall of Fame
The Community Pillars
Every executive committee since the association was founded, on the record. Several of these people have since left Shenzhen, but the association they built carried on without them.
Celebrating the leaders who built our community~2020 → 2026
~2020
- Dr. Lukeman Afolabi Interim President Now: Performance Validation
2020–2023
- Dr. Samuel Oluwarotimi President Now: University of Derby, United Kingdom
- Dr. Omisore Olatunji Secretary Now: Central Queensland University, Australia
- Dr. Toluwanimi Akiyemi Treasurer Now: Guangdong Laboratory of Chinese Medicine, Zhuhai
- Dr. Usman Saleh Toru Public Relations Officer Now: Postdoctoral researcher, Guangzhou University
2023–2026
- Dr. Toluwanimi Akiyemi President Now: Guangdong Laboratory of Chinese Medicine, Zhuhai
- Dr. Usman Saleh Toru Vice President & PRO Now: Postdoctoral researcher, Guangzhou University
From the record
The line of service,
2020 to now.
Members went to an election in February 2020. What follows is the association's own account of the three committees since, kept here so its history does not have to be held in memory.
- Feb 2020 An election among members of the Nigerian community in Shenzhen. Dr. Samuel Oluwarotimi is elected President.
- Mid-term Dr. Toluwanimi Akiyemi joins the executive, bringing it to four. He keeps the financial records and runs a number of the association's activities.
- Feb 2023 Dr. Oluwarotimi relocates from China to the United Kingdom and formally steps down. Dr. Toluwanimi Akiyemi takes the presidency, with Dr. Usman Saleh Toru as Vice President and PRO.
- 2026 Engr. Francis Okafor is elected President at the head of a committee of six, and holds the office today.
Dr. Samuel Oluwarotimi held the presidency for three years. Dr. Omisore Olatunji served as Secretary and Dr. Usman Saleh Toru as Public Relations Officer, and the three of them carried the association until Dr. Toluwanimi Akiyemi joined and made it four.
Their work was the ordinary business of a community association: keeping members in contact with one another, standing behind the ones who needed it, and looking after the welfare of Nigerians living in the city. Most of that leaves no paperwork behind, which is why the association writes down what it can.
On stepping down, Dr. Oluwarotimi thanked the committee and the wider membership for three years of cooperation, and asked that the work carry on toward a Nigerian community in Shenzhen that is supportive, harmonious and moving forward. It did.
The office has changed hands twice since. Dr. Toluwanimi Akiyemi, who had kept the books, held the presidency from 2023 to 2026. Engr. Francis Okafor has held it since 2026, with a committee of six behind him. The line is unbroken, which is the whole point of keeping a record.
The committee of 2020
- Dr. Samuel Oluwarotimi President
- Dr. Omisore Olatunji Secretary
- Dr. Usman Saleh Toru Public Relations Officer
- Dr. Toluwanimi Akiyemi Treasurer
Since then
- Dr. Toluwanimi Akiyemi President, 2023 to 2026
- Engr. Francis Okafor President, 2026 to now
Held on file by the association. If a name, a date or a figure here is wrong, tell the committee and it will be corrected.