Bishop Bola Odeleke is a Nigerian pastor, evangelist, preacher, founder and general overseer of Power Pentecostal Church. She was the first African woman to become a bishop.
Born 1950 in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, southwestern Nigeria, Bola had her primary and secondary education at Ilesa, the hometown of her mother. She became a Christian in 1970 but began her evangelism on November 1974.
She became a bishop on May 28, 1995 and was the first African woman to become a bishop.
Pastor Bola began her ministry in 1974. She has however had to go through certain vicissitudes at different stages of her ministry. She lost her husband, who was a member of the then Provisional Ruling Council in the regime of President Ibrahim Babangida, in a motor accident in 1990. That incident soon cast a shadow on her destiny as things never remained the same again. Three years after the death of her husband, she married one Rev. Salau, a member of her church.