THE Ahiajioku Research Centre, a parastatal of the Imo State government set up to research and promote the Igbo civilization, will honour the founder and chairman of the Geometric Power Group, Professor Bart Nnaji, for successfully delivering the over $800m Aba Independent Power project in Abia State.
The honour will take place on November 27 in Owerri at a special ceremony to mark the 45th anniversary of the establishment of the Ahiajioku Lecture Series that started during the tenure of Imo State Governor Sam Mbakwe in the Second Republic of 1979 to 1983.
These facts were disclosed this afternoon by Nze Ray Emeana, the Director General of the Ahiajioku Research Centre who led an eight-person delegation to pay a courtesy visit to Professor Nnaji at the Geometric Power headquarters in the Osisoma Industrial Layout, Aba.
“We are giving you this special recognition for not only advocating speedy economic development of the entire Igboland in your 2009 Ahiajioku Lecture at the Grasshoppers Stadium in Owerri and at the prestigious annual Odenigbo lecture of the Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri in 2016 which you gave in the Igbo language for two hours but also going ahead to practise what you preach by delivering the Aba Power Project now supplying constant and safe electricity to nine of the 17 local government areas in Imo Abia State”.
Both the Ahiajioku Lecture series and the yearly public lecture of the Owerri Catholic Archdiocese are delivered by outstanding scholars of Igbo origin.
Nnaji was a globally recognized researcher in engineering when he left the United States in 2004 to return to Nigeria to lead the Aba IPP which includes an 188MW Geometric Power Ltd and Aba Power Electricity Company Ltd, making it Nigeria’s only integrated electricity group.
“We believe that by honouring you, we will be creating a new value system in Igbolaland and encourage other worthy sons and daughters of our nation to do as you have done”, Nze Emeana stated.
“The Igbo world is in a hurry to leapfrog in developmental terms, as Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, and Taiwan have done”.
The Aba IPP is considered the biggest single investment in the Southeast geopolitical zone, and its reliable power supply has attracted such investments as the Enyimba Economic City worth billions of dollars and is promoted by Darl Uzu, another former academic turned entrepreneur, in the pattern of such Chinese cities as Shanghai.
Professor Nnaji thanked the Imo State government for reviving the annual Ahiajioku Lecture after a five-year hiatus.
It will hold on November 27 and 28, and will be delivered by Bishop Godfrey Onah, the Catholic bishop of Nsukka who was the deputy rector of the Pontifical Urbanian University in Rome where he was also an eminent philosophy professor.
“Please, inform Governor Uzordimma”, Nnaji told the delegation, “we are happy that the lecture is back and, what is more, and Ahajioku has given rise to a major government agency researching and advancing the Igbo civilization”.
He pledged to continue to work for rapid national development, saying that all six geopolitical zone in the country should become development centres rather than centres for acrimonious politics.
He revealed that the steel tubular polars used in the Aba Ring-fenced Area are the only type in the country designed to ensure that Aba continues to enjoy power even in the event of natural disasters like earthquakes because of its primacy in the country’s economic development.
In a vote of thanks, a member of the Ahiajioku Research Centre, Professor Goddy Onuoha, thanked Nnaji for his record as a former Minister of Power and as a former Minister of Science and Technology.
- “As a minister, you never took no for an answer, and the work you did in 1993, though for a very brief period you were in public office, still stands”.
