Career Biography

Ruby Omokaro Okpor, is currently Head, Legal and Compliance, Company Secretary/Data Protection Officer and functions as General Counsel and Company of Samsung Electronics with head office in Lagos, Nigeria. The functions cut across West Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali and Cameroon.

Ruby holds a first degree in law from University of Benin and obtained a Master of International Law and Diplomacy degree from University of Lagos, Nigeria. Additionally, Ruby possesses a master’s degree in Oil and Gas Law from Robert Gordon University, Scotland. Furthermore, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from University of East London, United Kingdom.

Ruby has over 26 years combined experience obtained from private legal practice as a lawyer and as in-house counsel with leadership roles in multinational organisations. At A.G. Giwa & Co, Ruby headed litigation portfolio and provided leadership as deputy head of the firm. On these roles, the firm achieved higher success to the satisfaction of all clients and success rate in litigations increased to over 98% before his journey in-house.

Ruby has worked in-house in leadership positions in the multinational companies for over a period of 20 years. Ruby’s in-house journey commenced in 2006 when he joined Huawei Technologies Company in Nigeria as an in-house legal counsel. Within a short time as in-house counsel at Huawei, Ruby won excellent in-house counsel award and became Regional Legal manager, responsible for West Africa Legal affairs management (Legal and Regulatory) portfolio. Ruby made landmark achievements including efficiently drove corporate governance, secretarial administration to the board and performed all statutory obligations, established effective legal processes and policies for efficiency. Additionally, Ruby tremendously drove cost-efficiency by achieving legal cost reduction by over 60%.

In commercial activities, Ruby negotiated complex multi-millions of dollars’ commercial contracts including MTN telecom projects, Globacom telecom projects, Airtel telecoms projects, Visafone telecoms projects, Etisalat telecom projects, Orange telecoms project (Ivory Coast), Ghana Telecoms telecoms projects (Ghana) just to mention a few.

As a mark of excellence and achievement, Ruby was awarded Huawei Gold Award for contribution to organisational success.

At Samsung, Ruby won best employee of the year for his achievements and consistently exceeded set goals. Ruby continues to be a trusted advisor to senior management in various strategic matters, investments decisions and policies formulation. In addition, Ruby has established efficient disputes management processes, compliance management processes, contract management processes including electronic contract management system. Furthermore, Ruby successfully managed complex litigations worth over US$200mn and ₦12bn respectively. He also initiated legal cost-efficiently and efficiently reduced legal cost by over 55%.

In business support, Ruby successfully negotiated complex international sales and supplies contracts with foreign and domestic parties worth US$10bn.

As Data Protection Officer, Ruby has effectively achieved total compliance level with applicable data protection and privacy regulations across West Africa. This has protected the organisation from reputational harm and regulatory fines.

As Company Secretary and trusted board advisor, Ruby provided has driven corporate governance at board level including developing risk management framework. Ruby continues to provide needed secretarial support to the board and filed required regulatory returns and notices to regulators.