His Story by themes | IgbotommaNduche

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His Story

(Some details)

His Father's Friend

Growing up, Nd’s sole role model was his father, Papa Mark Okoroafor Uche - a determined, self-made man who took his teenage life in his own little hands and quietly shaped it into an adult success story; a strong, handsome man who lived a full and eventful life; a calm, simple man who lived and helped others live; a kind and generous man who shared everything he could spare; a great father to his biological children and to all members of the extended family; a diligent civil servant who served Nigeria for 32 years and a responsible citizen who rolled up his sleeves for his community and helped it promote fairness, justice and development.

Like his father, Nd has loved education all his life and has benefitted hugely from it. His love of education has been contagious such that he has infected many with it.

Like his father, he has enjoyed no privileges but has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps every inch of the way.

Like his father he has kept his lifestyle simple, clean and entirely honourable.

Like his father, he has been serving his community all his adult life.

And like his father who moved extensively in the course of a long civil service career, Nd moved extensively across the globe in the course of his own long Shell career.

In recognition of all of this, his father treated him like a friend even while still a teenage. There was hardly the need for harsh disciplinary words, let alone the stick.

His Mother's boy

Nd's mother fondly called him “nwa agbogho nne ya” - his mother’s daughter. That was her fun way of acknowledging Nd’s abiding presence beside her; eager and able to work side by side with her on the farm, in the kitchen, at the market and on every mundane domestic chore, even when others were also chipping in. They worked especially well together while Igbere people were refugees in the forest during the Nigeria-Biafra war.

In 1970, soon after the war, and until he left for secondary school in 1971, Nd would rise with his mother every day before cockcrow and help her prepare her full wares of akara and akamu. He would then head out to the army camp (where Igbere Secondary school stands today) to hawk the akara and akamu before going to school. On his way to school, Nd would also take what he would need to carry on to the farm after classes, right from school.

What Nd was actually doing was simply learning from the best - the most industrious woman the world has ever known: a farmer, a seamstress, a baker, a traditional pharmacist, etc. A woman who would rise at 5 am every single day and multi-task till 10 pm. A woman of immense resourcefulness.

Nd ended up competent in the kitchen like any woman, competent on the farm like any man and smart at the market like any man or woman. He ended up learning the value of time without being lectured on same. He ended up understanding how big small things can be. He ended up achieving the thick skin that would bounce off much of life’s curve balls.

The Model Student

In 1971, less than a year after the civil war that left everyone destitute, Nd left Igbere for Abiriba to start secondary school.

For the five years of secondary school at Enuda High School - three exams every year, Nd took the first position in his class.

For three of those five years, Nd was actually a day student far from home. He trekked to and from school everyday and in every weather condition, five kilometres in each direction.

As day student, he juggled his own domestic chores with his full academic work load. Every Friday, at the close of classes, he trekked twenty kilometers from Abiriba back to Igbere, where he would go to the farms every Saturday with his mother in order to help grow and or gather his own food supplies. He would trek again in the opposite direction every Sunday afternoon, arriving Abiriba just in time to prepare his meals before completing weekend assignments. His cooking skills came in handy. He did these for three years! Yet, he always found time for extra-curricula activities.

Nd finally went into boarding house at the school in his last two years of school and amped up his extra-curriculas activities as Librarian, Editor-in-Chief and Leader of the Literary and Debating Society.

In 1975, Nd earned a shining Distinction in the West African Examination with a nine-subject spread so balanced between the Sciences and Arts that he could have been admitted to study virtually any subject of his choosing.

While waiting for possible scholarship to support his University education, Nd landed a job at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation entirely on his own.

In 1976, Nd was admitted to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) to read Electrical/Electronic Engineering. He started out with his little savings but soon landed a Federal Government scholarship made possible by his excellent WAEC certificate. But his first year performance at UNN was so good that the Faculty itself put forward his name for Oil Company scholarships which Elf Oil soon offered and sustained for the rest of the 5-year Engineering programme. The Elf scholarship was conditioned on continued excellent academic results which Nd went on to maintain. He graduated top three in his class, landing a provisional job with Shell even before he wrote his final exams.

At Nsukka, Nd did not simply bury his head in Engineering books. He was very active in campus life, leading various groups inside and outside his Engineering faculty. He was a prolific writer, opining on campus current affairs while also penning and publishing creative works. He was selected to lead a literary group, the Nsukka Conference of Creative Artists which had the famous Prof. Chinua Achebe as its Grand Patron. Nd went on to organize several literary events, one of which featured the famous poet, Gabriel Okara.

Nd did stay away from campus politics, even though he served on the Editorial Board of the Students Union, when he was specially invited to do so.

His was a rich, clean, complete and very productive campus life.

The Family Man

Right after graduation from University, Nd deliberately turned his attention to settling down with the right woman. That soon resulted in his meeting the very beautiful Ngozi Igwe Chukwu in 1981. After several years of engagement and requisite preparations, they were married in 1987 and started a family the very next year when their first son, Bernie Okoroafor, was born. Their second son, Paul Uchechukwu, joined the family two and a half years later in 1991.

His family has been the centre of his life ever since. He would head straight for them after work each day. They have accompanied him on all his four international postings. He vacationed with them all over the world. He has lived his life as an example for his kids.

He mentored them exhaustively, but left them the space to think for themselves and make most of their own life-changing decisions.

He proudly saw his boys celebrated at their high school in Oman as all-round students: the best behaved, great sportsmen and outstanding academic performers. They would go on to excel at two of North America’s best universities: The University of Toronto and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His first son, Okoroafor, has since become a Cloud Computing Specialist at IBM, Canada.

Nd also fully encouraged and supported his wife as she too embarked on life-long learning, culminating in an MBA from the University of Leicester, UK, opening the door to a teaching stint at the Sultan Qaboos University, Oman and now a career in Early Learning consulting and Managing Director of Zein Child Care, Netherlands.

When tragedy struck and took away Paul, the younger of the two sons, shortly after his graduation from MIT, Nd took the whole thing in his stride and immediately swung into immortalizing that special son by establishing the Paul Uche Memorial Foundation which has been focusing on improving lives in Igbere.

The Creative Writer

At 19, just out of secondary school, Nd already had a collection of over 20 poems and several essays, one of which was published in the Enugu-based Daily Star newspaper of the time. In 1976, he was featured on the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation literary programme where he discussed his emerging works. By 1980, his final year in the University, his body of work had grown to include three plays, seven short stories and many new poems. In 1980, Nd won the first prize in a national short story competition with a short story he titled, "Together Forever".

Despite a very heavy engineering workload at Shell, the instability of frequent transfers and the rigours of raising kids, Nd continued to write in whatever time he could spare, including on many long-distance flights.

In 1997, while in Malaysia, he published “Ahead”, his first collection of poems. In 2006, during his assignment in Oman, he published his first novel, “Their Son, Her Brother”.

With the advent of social media, Nd’s Facebook wall is a veritable pool of creative, wide-ranging, thought-provoking content.

The Community Man

Nd Uche has been serving his Igbere community since he was a kid.

While still an Engineering student at the University of Nigeria, he spent his long vacations running free classes for the students of Igbere Secondary school.

In 1979, while still an undergraduate, he mobilized his fellow Igbere undergraduates and Igbere secondary school students to buy/gather books for the Igbere Library which was under construction at the time.

In 1981, while still serving on the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC), Nd became an active floor member of the Igbere Welfare Union (IWU) Lagos and got co-opted into the peace intervention that branch embarked upon to try to nip in the bud a major conflict that was emerging inIgbere at the time.

In 1983 and 1984, in the tender stages of his professional career, a time he should be more focused on his own future, Nd organized and ran a series of public lectures in Igbere and Aba focused on the economic well-being of Igbere people. Those efforts brought Igbere’s best intellectuals of the time in touch with a good crosssection of Igbere people and tried to expose economic opportunities Igbere people were ignoring but needed to start preparing for.

He followed these up with active participation in Igbere Welfare Union activities in PortHarcourt and Aba, always advocating problem-solving as opposed to just discussing things.

Nd joined the Omezi Ebiri Age Group early and helped draft its constitution. He never missed its meetings if he was in town.

After a very long period of turmoil in Igbere, characterized by separate rag-tag Ezumezu celebrations, a bankrupt Igbere Welfare Union turned to Omezi Ebiri Age Grade to host a very delicate reunion Ezumezu. It was to Nd Uche that the Age Grade turned for leadership and guidance. He was generous with his time, ideas and personal resources, helping realise an Ezumezu that proved to be a durable turning point towards peace in the community.

He has developed for this Age Grade a very comprehensive plan for future-proof redevelopment of Ebele market and hopes that Igbere people will take it on and implement someday.

Early in December of 1997, soon after returning from Malaysia, and while living in far away Lagos, Nd visited Igbere and saw that the main road from Onu to Amankalu (and to the rest of Amakwu Igbere), was badly broken by erosion at Amaofufo, near Unity. He immediately contacted his Igbere colleague at Shell, Mr Onyema Ubani, and they jointly planned, funded and executed solid repairs of the failed road section. They also reinforced the sides and bottom of the deep gully right under the Unity culvert to stop cascading flood water from eroding the ground any further. They even implemented guard rails for the culvert to improve safety. That intervention kept the road in good and safe condition for years and that section remains as rebuilt, except for being resurfaced by government. Recent failures of the same road section, caused by blockage of drainage, actually involved a different spot. Nd and Onyema did this so quietly that very few Igbere people know this fact to this day. No signboards. No launching.

In 2001, Nd rallied some of Igbere’s best minds to form a well-resourced cooperative society intended to refocus economic activities in Igbere and stem the growing criminality spearheaded by a growing army of unemployed youths.

In 2007, responding to a request by Igbere people in Texas, Nd again rallied a few Igbere intellectuals to start a scholarship scheme for Igbere kids which benefited several secondary school kids. That initiative was reinvigorated in 2018 in what is now called Kwande Foundation, a robust and growing scholarship initiative currently supporting twenty four Igbere kids.

When in 2011, the Igbere Welfare Union thought of placing the development of the Community on a sound strategic footing, Nd was invited to serve in what was called an “Economic Planning and Urban Development” committee headed by Prof. Michael Ijioma. From the position of an ordinary member of the committee, Nd made profound contributions and used technology effectively to glue globally highly dispersed members together.

In 2015, in the immediate aftermath of an unimaginable personal family tragedy, Nd’s mind was on Community development as the best way to immortalize, Paul Uchechukwu, the son he lost. He formed the Paul Uche Memorial Foundation, a platform he subsequently used for a comprehensive and high quality renovation and expansion of a very dilapidated Igbere Health Centre. He continues to maintain and support the centre to this day.

While Nd was going through schools, his Ndi Okoro community, Amankalu Igbere, struggled for many years but could not make a decent start to its proposed new hall. At his first opportunity to attend the Ndi Okoro meeting as a working person, Nd immediately envisioned a better solution to this need. Right there at the meeting he promised them the hall would be done. He talked to his Ndi Okoro brother, Deacon Maduka Kazi, who agreed to team up with him to realise the new idea. Together, they soon delivered a structure far more elaborate and far more useful than what was originally conceived. They not only built a big new hall, but did it in a way that also restored an existing “obu”.

During the burial ceremony of Nd’s mother at the Amankalu square in 2016, Nd noticed that an “obu ikpikpa” that was in daily use by ordinary folks as a casual meeting place was collapsing. He resolved, not just to rebuild it, but to upgrade it to something bigger, more elegant and more useful. That too he quickly and quietly delivered.

In 2017, noticing how dark the entire Amankalu community was outside festive periods, Nd quietly installed solar electric lights across all of Amankalu after piloting them at the Ndi Okoro compound - his ancestral compound which his family moved out of in 1959.

Nd has been campaigning for the restoration, upgrade and proper management of primary schools in Igbere. Between 2011 and 2020 he has visited all seven primary schools several times and has engaged several audiences with his findings and proposals.

Every opportunity he had, Nd advocated for a more meaningful, more dignified Ezumezu ceremony; one that is more about substance and less about noisy impressions. He has contributed cash quietly towards many Ezumezu.

In 2019, the Amankalu Community turned to Nd Uche for help to realise the restoration of its long neglected and badly deteriorated community hall. Within days Nd mobilized people and resources, including his own resources. Within six months, the hall was already wearing a new look.

So, Nd does not simply talk about community development. He practices it, and does so without fanfare. He does so mostly by bringing people together and does not care if his personal contributions are not visible and not recognised.

The Hands-on Leader

Throughout his life, leadership has been thrust upon Nd everywhere and in almost every group he has been part of.

As an undergraduate at the University of Nigeria, he was either invited or unanimously elected to lead groups that included: the Association of Electrical/Electronics Students, the Bende Students Union, the Nsukka Conference of Creative Artists.

In Malaysia, upon joining the Rotary Club, he was immediately made the International Coordinator and ended up leading several local Rotary outreach efforts.

It was to Nd that the Nigerian community in Miri, Malaysia and the IT department in Sarawak Shell turned for coordination of major events.

Between 1998 and 2001, the leadership of an industry group, the Telecoms Sub-Committee of Oil Producers Trade Section (OPTS) of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, fell on Nd Uche. It was a platform for all Telecom issues relevant to all oil companies in Nigeria. Nd's leadership period of the group coincided with the period Telecommunications in Nigeria was undergoing major regulatory transformation. Nd led the oil industry to make significant contributions to the shaping of regulations that helped bring about Nigeria's GSM revolution as well as needed improvements around things like availability and cost of leased lines for national and international connectivity.

In the Sultanate of Oman, Nd was invited by the South African Ambassador and the President of the foremost international school in Muscat to lead the entire Africa Community. Nd ended up leading the group for five years and built a very influential African community from nothing, the highlight of which was a very impactful annual Africa Day event graced even by very senior Ministers of the Omani government and which has continued there to this day. The Africa Committee he headed used the Africa Day celebrations to shine bright lights on both the progress and needs of the African continent. They embarked upon successful charity interventions on behalf of remote schools in Africa, equipping one of them with books.

In recognition of his efforts and ideas, Nd was invited to meetings of all African Ambassadors.

At Nd’s first attendance of the meeting of Nigerians in Oman, he was unanimously asked to lead the group’s annual Nigeria Day event in Muscat. He went on to organize the most impactful version of that event ever, spanning three days and featuring exhibitions, lectures, a gala dinner, cultural performances, fundraising and charity interventions.

The following year, the Nigerian community unanimously elected Nd their leader. He was returned unopposed to that role of Nigerian leader a second time until he insisted that someone else should try.

So, for years, Nd ended up running both the African group and the Nigerian group in parallel. He continued to lead the Africa group until he left Oman.

Professionally, Nd rose to the membership of Shell’s IT leadership team, first in Nigeria and finally globally, finishing up as Shell’s Global Delivery Manager for Field Telecommunications, responsible for telecommunications delivery in major projects around the world.

Nd’s quiet leadership roles in Igbere, his community of birth, are self-evident and have been outlined above in the “Community man” section.

In all his leadership roles, Nd led from the front: he put his hands and his money where his mouth was. He did not care about the titles and privileges of his leadership positions, preferring to see himself merely as working among equals or even superiors. Transparency was the obvious hallmark of his leadership style: never a hint of doubt about motives or prudence in any group he led or helped. A stickler to quality and discipline, he was always punctual and highly organized and demanded same of all.

The Engineer

In 1981, Nd graduated in the top quartile in the Electrical/Electronics Engineering programme of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He immediately had job offers from five major companies and eventually chose to work for Shell, having done his NYSC with Shell and gotten to know the company better than the others.

Upon joining Shell’s Telecommunications department in PortHarcourt in 1982, Nd was immediately placed in sole charge of the company's mobile radio communications infrastructure, a critical service upon which oil field activities depended for both safety and operational efficiency. Three years later, his role was expanded to include managing the company’s private radio transmissions infrastructure, both microwave backbones and ultra-high frequency (UHF) spurlinks. Two short years later, he was moved to a position of planning and delivering a broad range of critical telecommunications infrastructures projects for underground cables, radio links, telephone exchanges, mobile radios, etc. His spectacular success at all these roles resulted in his being moved in 1989 to a position of specialist trainer, to design training programmes and run courses for the development of his own colleagues. It was a platform that Nd took full advantage of to also train himself in emerging technology areas. His spectacular success in this role was what propelled him into a small pool of staff eligible for overseas assignment. And the new technologies he embraced in this role equipped him for very challenging new roles in his subsequent overseas postings.

So, in 1992 Nd was moved to The Hague to serve as the sole Telecommunications Engineer in an international team that evaluated bids for today’s Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company (NLNG). Upon completion of that assignment, Nd was asked to stay on in The Hague and moved to a project to execute Local Area Network (an emerging technology at the time) in the company’s E&P headquarters. His overseas boss was so impressed with his performance in these two assignments that he (the Oyibo boss) worked to get Nd a full long term international assignment in Malaysia. Nd thus moved from the Netherlands in 1993, with his young family, straight to Malaysia, where he was assigned the role of developing new data networks for Sarawak Shell. Thus Nd’s Engineering skills grew from traditional telecommunications to include data networking, the technology upon which the emerging client-server computing would depend.

Upon his return to Nigeria four years later in 1997, Shell Nigeria had merged its Telecommunications and Computing departments into one IT organization and put Nd in charge of Telecommunications and Computing projects delivery for Lagos and Abuja, thus challenging Nd to quickly broaden his Engineering skills further to include various forms of computing - hardware and software. He would go on to manage the execution of IT systems for Shell’s Abuja locations as well transform the computer desktops and mail service for Abuja and Lagos.

In recognition of Nd’s now broad technical skills and strategic thinking, he was transferred in 1999 to PortHarcourt to take on IT Strategy and Planning for all of Shell Nigeria.

In 2001, this role and Nd's broad skill set made him the ideal candidate to represent Shell Nigeria in The Hague in a three-month Shell E&P IT strategy refresh that resulted in the first ever massive reorganization of Shell EP IT worldwide. Upon his return to Nigeria, Nd was asked to run a similar strategy refresh for Shell Nigeria and he delivered a revamped and streamlined Shell IT organization for Nigeria. Nd thus added strategic planning to his resume.

Soon, the Petroleum Development Oman, a Shell affiliate in the Middle East, needed a new Head of Telecommunications and advertised for it globally. Nd showed interest, got interviewed and emerged the best candidate. In 2003, Nd relocated to Oman and began to oversee the re-engineering of every aspect of PDO’s extensive telecommunications infrastructure - from their 1000-mile microwave backbone to their data centres and telephone systems. PDO soon saw a need to take advantage of the full breadth of Nd’s IT skills and moved him into the role of IT Infrastructure Manager, responsible for all aspects of IT infrastructure: telecommunications and computing. From the originally agreed four years, PDO extended Nd’s assignment to seven years.

When Nd finally left Oman in 2010, it was for another international assignment, this time back in The Hague, Netherlands. And it was initially for a new area for him called Program Management, focused on delivering a major computer refresh for Shell EP around the world. A year in, Nd’s scope was broadened to managing the entire global portfolio of Telecommunications and Computing infrastructure projects for all Shell EP locations around the world. Another year later, the Shell Group (not just EP this time) identified Field Telecommunications as an area critical to optimal delivery of capital projects and requiring special attention. They looked around for an ideal candidate and zoomed into Nd Uche. Thus, Nd got transferred to Shell Canada for this role, returning full circle to pure Telecommunications, backed up with broad management and strategic planning experience. It is the role in which he effectively retired upon attaining the mandatory retirement age of 60.

Nd Uche is therefore an Electrical/Electronics Engineer who has been tried, tested and certified in many global roles in many different countries around the globe - four continents all.

The “Talented Amateur”

In many professional areas, Nd Uche exhibits an uncanny ability to produce professional results without professional training.

He is a novelist, a poet, an essayist but not by training. He is an accomplished photographer, but has no formal training in photography.

In his many real estate projects, he instinctively came up with great architectural concepts. From his country home which he sketched out in detail on his new computer in 1992 to his hotel complex which he also sketched out, to Church projects and friend’s projects in Nigeria and elsewhere, Nd astounds with his instinctive grasp of efficient space planning and building aesthetics. Everything done in the functionally beautiful renovation/upgrade of the Igbere Health Centre has the imprints of Nd’s creativity. In fashion design, Nd participates creatively and actively in the design of his own clothes and the results are always elegant. He has always been his own barber.

The label of “Talented Amateur” came from Nd’s wife, Ngozi Uche, as far back as 2004 in Malaysia.

The Loyal Friend

Nd Uche's childhood friends remain his friends to this day, regardless of any differences in social status. He still relates with them exactly as he did when they played on the same sandy playgrounds. He is available to them, however physically distant he may be from them. He still looks up to them as necessary.

To his friends Nd is totally transparent. He will help as and when required but rarely in a superficial, selfish, cosmetic manner. He will always dig a little and challenge a little to make sure he is offering the help that is really needed. He believes that friendship is not about saying yes to everything but about doing the right thing for our friends. His friends generally end up appreciating that and treating him same way.

Some of Nd's most enduring and satisfying friendships are with former colleagues and bosses, some of whom initially saw him as a threat or a tool. That such persons ended up responding to Nd's transparency and integrity by warming up to him has been very satisfying validation for him.

Even more satisfying to Nd is his enduring friendship with many accomplished people very senior to him. He has friends like that all over the world. Not in large numbers, but just the right quality. To have such people treat him almost as their social equal has been both humbling and enriching.

The most eloquent testimony to the quality of Nd's friendship is to be found in how he relates to the families of friends who have since passed, treating their children as his own.

The Mentor

A number of Igbere kids have been generous in ascribing their success in life in part to the quiet words Nd Uche spoke to them at critical junctures in their lives. In some cases, Nd had already forgotten those interventions, having done them as his regular social duty. Same applies to many non-Igbere kids.

When people approached Nd for financial support, he often chose to give them more than money. He almost always chose to first help them with ideas that would clarify and sharpen their needs and plans. For those seeking support to start or revive a business, Nd would first try to help them develop a business plan. For those seeking support to finance education, he would first sit them down to review their career goals and academic choices. Many would initially resent being asked to do anything other than receive the money they sought. But for him, money is never the most important thing he could give anybody even though he always gave the needed money. In situations like that, he was always comfortable with his tough love.

Without fanfare, Nd has exclusively sponsored several Igbere kids in Universities in Nigeria and abroad in situations where he had no obligation to do so. His only motivation was to help kids with ability but no resources.

To Nd's own colleagues at work, he was often the mentor of choice, willing to go the extra mile to help younger colleagues navigate the often treacherous world of work. It made no difference to Nd what the surname or place of origin was. All he would see was a colleague needing and deserving guidance. As it happened, Nd received formal training for career guidance early in his own career when he held a training role.