by Annika S. Hipple
Prudence International Magazine
Vol. IV #1 (Fall 2008)
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Ask friends to describe Kingsley Tunde Oyeneye, and one quality stands out: perseverance.
“Kingsley is very tenacious. When he wants something, he goes after it,” says attorney and certified public accountant O.J. Lawal, who first met Oyeneye when the latter came seeking tax advice and waited seven hours for the information he needed.
“I’m very persistent by nature,” agrees Oyeneye, 44. “I recognize difficulties for what they are but don’t let them dictate what is going to happen to me. Where other people see difficulties, I see opportunities.”
It has taken plenty of persistence for Oyeneye to travel the challenging road from his native Nigeria to his current success as an administrative law judge for the state of New York. A graduate of Lagos State University School of Law, he was working for a Nigerian law firm when a friend entered his name in the US Diversity Visa Lottery. Oyeneye had no idea that he had been entered until he got a call informing him that he had won.
He moved to Houston in 1995, but it took time and a lot of hard work before he was able to resume his legal career in his new country.
“When I came to the US, the first job I did was at a plastic manufacturing company,” Oyeneye says. “It was overnight work. You have all these machines working all through the night, and you’re almost dead by the time morning comes.”
After two weeks, Oyeneye had had enough and took a new job with Pizza Hut. “I was new to Houston. When people called and ordered pizza, they would have forgotten they ordered it before I got there,” he recalls, laughing.
While working yet another job, at Target, Oyeneye took classes and qualified as a corrections officer, a job that provided some permanency and benefits - and time for other work.
“At some point, I was working three jobs,” he says. “I worked two full-time jobs for five years, all while taking classes for the bar exam.”
Long-time friend Trudy Onuoha remembers Oyeneye’s demanding schedule vividly. “He was working as a corrections officer; he would do that overnight, then he would get off work and do something else, and he had a third shift working at a gas station as a clerk. Sometimes he would have only two or three hours of sleep.”
It all paid off in 2001, when Oyeneye was admitted to the bar in New York. He got his first law job there through a temp agency and worked in other contract positions before becoming in-house counsel for Liberty Mutual Insurance.
In 2006, Oyeneye moved to the bench, where he has jurisdiction over Medicaid-related matters. Most cases involved people who have been denied Medicaid or feel they are entitled to additional benefits. Medicaid represents approximately 40 percent of New York’s budget, and fraud and human error cost the state millions of dollars per year.
Oyeneye takes his responsibility seriously. “When you’re dealing with decisions that affect people’s lives, you want to be able to go to sleep knowing that you did the right thing. The decision of whether the bills get paid or not rests on you.”
“Kingsley is a person of very high integrity,” says retired attorney Robert Bressler, Oyeneye’s former supervisor at Liberty Mutual. “He likes to get to the bottom of things. You can’t fool Kingsley.”
Often Oyeneye finds that a mistake has indeed been made, but sometimes, the law is clearly on the state’s side. “When I first started, that was the biggest challenge, having to turn people down,” he reflects. “You don’t become immune to it, but as much as possible you put your personal feelings aside and go with what the law says.” Keeping up with the numerous, constantly changing Medicaid regulations is a challenge in itself.
Oyeneye hopes to rise to the level of principal administrative law judge and ultimately even higher. “I hope to get to the Supreme Court, to the State Supreme Court at least,” he says. He believes it is possible. “You keep knocking on the door and eventually it’s going to open.”
Lawal adds, “If there’s anything that drives Kingsley it’s his tenacity and his conviction that anything is possible, and once you have that belief, nothing can stop you.”
“He’s got the intestinal fortitude,” says Bressler. “He’s got the intellect, and he’s fair and knows what makes people tick. Who knows, someday I might be able to say, ‘I knew you when, Kingsley.’”
