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By Prince Randolph ErumaGborie
These are Challenging and Strange times. I have just returned from the interment of this great Nigerian at the Ikoyi Cemetery. He is the fourth man of influence in my life and was thus obligated to pay him my last respect. So much one would have wished was different, as human, we can only propose but God disposes.
This event was earlier planned for Agenebode the place of his roots where he has his country home. His early years were spent in Minna as his parents who were devout Catholics had career with the Nigerian Railways. I am sure the periodic movement in work transfers enable him to acquire fluency in all of the Nigerian major languages of Hausa, and Yoruba and maybe a little less of Ibo . He did his Secondary Education at St John Secondary School and went on to study Geography at the University of Ibadan.
After graduation in about 1969 he started off his career as a teacher at Chude’s Girls Grammar School Sapele, before taking up appointment with the Federal Civil Service where he worked in various capacities including being in the Cabinet Office during the Obasanjo Military Regime at Dodan Barracks, Ikoyi Lagos. His time in the Civil Service exposed him to the great quest for the Industrialization of Nigeria with his involvement in the setting up of many of the Government owned Industries in the country as he rose to the Directorate level of the Ministry of Industry.
With his early retirement from the Civil Service in the second half of the 1980s, he went on to pursue his passion for industry having garnered vast experience in this area in his time in the Service of Country to set up his Office at 50 Norman Williams S.W. Ikoyi Lagos under a holding known as CITCO HOLDINGS LIMITED.
I joined his company as a Business Executive in January 1991 after my one-year stint with a firm in the sale of Desk Top Computers and its peripherals in Lagos following my relocation too from Sapele after my graduation in Business Administration from University of Benin in 1987 and National Youth Service. I spent the following 11 years till January of 2002 working with him as we built this great enterprise – a wholly indigenous private group with subsidiaries spanning Shipping, Information Technology, Manufacturing and Trading. I rose to become the Group Executive Director/ Chief Operating Officer of the Group from 1995.
His investment footprint included a stake in Century Merchant Bank where I was exposed to my first AGM meeting of Shareholders under the Chairmanship of Alhaji Ibrahim Tofa in Kano who later became the Presidential Candidate of the NRC in the June 12th Annulled Elections. Prince Ugbodaga was to later become a Commissioner in the Electoral Body for 3 months under the Shonekan Interim Government which ended with the emergence of the Abacha Regime.
Notable accomplishment in our Corporate life spent together are the ownership and operation of a coastal tanker of 12,324 DWT, involved in the lifting of Petroleum Products for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the major and independent petroleum products marketers both to and from the Refineries at Warri and Port Harcourt, and to Lagos Jetties. Activities also included lifting of import and export cargoes (petroleum) to & from Nigeria and the West Coast of Africa, since 1992.
The pioneering IT activities of Sistems Worldwide Network the first value added Network service provider in Nigeria with the commissioning of X.25 Network node in collaboration with British Telecoms (BT) U.K. and Teleglobe of Canada in 1994. Through this network, the 1st Internet node was activated in Nigeria in conjunction with CompuServe in September 1994. This network also enabled such customers as Arthur Andersen operate their secured global data communication facilities (FX90) to and from their Nigerian operations, United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) their secured global funds transfer services with Moneygram, and Procter and Gamble Nigeria’s secured link to their home office, amongst others. Furthermore, and in conjunction with Telkom South Africa, the 1st private VSAT deployment in Nigeria was implemented and commissioned for Allstates Trust Bank Limited for voice fax and data application as the backbone of its on-line banking in 1995.
As it is with all entrepreneurial efforts in Nigeria, kissing the frontiers of business comes with a huge price. The successes attained came with tons of trouble too and staying the course became a challenge.
He loved to keep fit and took care of that with regular exercises as a key part of a rather healthy life style. His choice of music is classical and a limited circle of friends. Participated religiously in all of the Lenten fasts. I had imagined that these will be sufficient to save him from the health challenges that rob him of his health in these last years. Such is the frailty of human existence as his best efforts could not deliver perfection which I can confirm he made attempts at attaining. This is also true for all of us as human. We all must come short somehow somewhere.
As I watched his lowering, I remembered once again my last privileged meeting with him on the 7th December 2019 where we did a short reminisce… but most significantly was the restoration of his faith in Jesus Christ [the things of earth stand next to him like a candle to the sun]….. Everything else loses relevance at this point …. Prince Eddy Ugbodaga is fine…