Final funeral rites for Bola Abimbola, the Nigerian-born lawyer, technology and information security specialist, entrepreneur and gospel jazz musician, will take place in Edmonton, Canada, on August 27 and 28, 2026, as family, friends and associates prepare to celebrate a life distinguished by professional reinvention and extraordinary resilience.
Abimbola, who was also known as “DJ” and performed music under the name Asaph, died on August 11, 2026, at the age of 62.
He was born on November 17, 1963.
His funeral in Edmonton will provide an opportunity to reflect on a remarkable journey that took him from legal practice in Nigeria to technology and cybersecurity in North America, entrepreneurship, gospel jazz and, eventually, advanced academic research in artificial intelligence.
Behind the many chapters of Abimbola’s professional life was another extraordinary story: for almost three decades, he pursued his ambitions while living with cancer of the thymus gland.
Abimbola began his professional journey in Nigeria, where he trained as a lawyer, obtaining an LLB before being called to the Nigerian Bar.
In 1988, he began his legal career at the Ministry of Justice in Kano, working on pleadings, affidavits, real estate and commercial transactions. The analytical skills required in legal practice — examining evidence, testing arguments and identifying weaknesses — would later prove useful when he made an unconventional transition into technology.
He subsequently spent six years in private practice at Abimbola, Aluko & Abimbola in Lagos, where his work covered contract disputes, insurance subrogation, matrimonial, corporate and labour law matters.
His responsibilities extended beyond legal practice into the management of the business itself, including payroll, staffing, costs, revenue targets and profit and loss management.
In 1997, Abimbola moved to the United States and embarked on a dramatic professional reinvention.
He became an Oracle Financials consultant, working on financial systems implementation before joining BankBoston in Massachusetts, where his responsibilities included converting a COBOL-based legacy platform to Oracle Applications 11.
Technology would become a defining part of the rest of his professional life.
After moving to Canada, Abimbola built a career encompassing information technology controls, cybersecurity, systems auditing, regulatory compliance and business continuity.
His professional engagements included Union Gas, Ford Motor Company, TD Canada Trust, the Ontario Ministry of Finance, Rogers and KPMG Risk Advisory Services.
At TD Canada Trust, he worked on Sarbanes-Oxley financial controls, systems auditing and business continuity planning. At the Ontario Ministry of Finance, his responsibilities included IT security strategy, public key infrastructure and two-factor authentication.
He later settled in Alberta and worked at EPCOR Utilities as an IT CSOX Advisor for Compliance and Sustainment, where his responsibilities included security metrics, remediation tracking and control automation.
Yet Abimbola’s ambitions were never confined to corporate employment.
He was also an entrepreneur who founded Batotech and AfroMedia TV.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he developed VivoMeetings, an online meeting platform that became widely used by independent African churches in North America when restrictions prevented congregations from gathering physically.
Music represented another dimension of his life.
Despite living with cancer of the thymus gland, Abimbola taught himself to play the saxophone, led music at his local church and released two gospel jazz albums under the name Asaph.
His decision to take up the saxophone was itself significant. About two decades earlier, he had deliberately chosen the wind instrument because playing it required deep breathing and throat resonance.
Long before then, music had already been part of his identity.
During his teenage years at the University of Ife, Abimbola ran an early music venture supplying the latest releases, an enterprise that earned him the nickname “DJ”.
He was also an accomplished athlete and played right wing for a teenage football team known as the Red Rovers.
According to the account of his life, Abimbola came within a few hundredths of a second of qualifying for the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow.
Even after establishing himself professionally, Abimbola maintained an appetite for education and continuous learning.
He was a member of ISACA, an A+ Certified Technician and Microsoft Certified Professional, and also pursued professional certifications and a master’s programme in Information Systems Security Management.
That intellectual journey ultimately brought together the two seemingly different worlds that had defined his career — law and technology.
In the final stage of his academic journey, Abimbola was pursuing a PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oviedo in Spain.
His dissertation, Using Machine Learning To Enable the Semantic Analysis of Canadian Maritime Case Law, applied emerging technology to legal analysis, effectively connecting the profession in which he began his working life with the technological field that later became central to his career.
Weeks before his death, he had been scheduled to defend the doctoral research.
Behind those achievements, however, was a health battle that lasted almost half his life.
Abimbola lived with cancer of the thymus gland for nearly 30 years, undergoing surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy while continuing to work, study, establish businesses and pursue music.
Rather than allowing the illness to determine the boundaries of his life, he continued to embark on new ventures and intellectual challenges. The account of his life describes this defining quality as “resilient optimism”.
Throughout those years, his family remained central to his life.
Abimbola is survived by his wife, Bose Lampejo, whom he met during their first year at university in Nigeria, and their sons, Tunde and Larry.
His wife and sons remained beside him through the long years of illness and treatment.
As relatives, friends and associates gather in Edmonton on August 27 and 28 for his final rites, they will be remembering a man whose legacy cannot easily be confined to one profession.
He began as a lawyer in Nigeria, reinvented himself as a technology professional in North America, worked in cybersecurity and regulatory compliance, founded businesses, created a virtual meeting platform, made gospel jazz music and pursued advanced research in artificial intelligence.
Underlying it all was an almost three-decade confrontation with cancer that did not prevent him from continuing to learn, create and build.
It is that combination of professional reinvention, intellectual curiosity and resilience that will form part of the legacy being celebrated as Bola Abimbola is given his final farewell in Edmonton.
By Kola Abimbola (brother) and Goke Ojo (childhood friend)
Follow us on:
