A Digital Memorial to Dr. E

By Ikechi Ibeji 14 Sep, 2022 0 Comments 241 Views

Today, September 14, 2022, Dr Emmanuel Onu Egbogah – an outstanding geologist and petroleum engineer, who bestrode this earth as a colossus of those two great professional callings, would have turned 80, had he lived to this day.

Four years have gone and it is still like yesterday!

This blog – Energy Nuggets Daily – is being launched on Egbogah’s birthday as my own little way of celebrating him and saying “thank you” for impacting my life without knowing where I come from. I was, he said, the best packager of events and publications in Nigeria! And I needed to be encouraged to succeed.

That was why he passionately dived into supporting Abuja Petroleum Roundtable and other initiatives I promoted. Somehow, we had met each other remotely by reputation – he by picking up one of my publications which was printed in Austin, Texas, and displayed on a rack space at the 2006 edition of SPE’s Offshore Technology Conference in Houston (and being enamoured by it). In turn, I heard about him more than a decade before I met him when an earlier mentor – G. Aret Adams told me about the encounter of a delegation he led to Malaysia as Group Managing Director of NNPC, with a Nigerian who briefed them on behalf of Petronas.

Just like Queen Elizabeth II, who is being celebrated today, everyone who met Egbogah has a unique story and memories. Permit me to quote from the book: Legacies of Dr Emmanuel Onu Egbogah, which I wrote and was distributed at the funeral of Dr E in August 2018, in partnership with Emerald Energy Institute, the University of Port Harcourt (founded with a US$ 1 million endowment by Egbogah):

This book is not Dr Egbogah's biography. It is simply a documentation of his effort and passion to influence events in his country of birth for the better. It holds him up as an icon and role model for succeeding generations of Nigerians to follow.

I heard a lot of stories about Dr Egbogah long before I met him for the first time in 2006. The first story I heard was from the late Chief Godwin Aret Adams, a former

Group Managing Director of NNPC, who was Chairman of, the Board of Directors of my company when I published a magazine known as Nigeria Petrobusiness in the 1990s.

Adams was very sober and humbled he narrated when he led a Nigerian delegation to Malaysia to understand what the Malaysians had done right and borrow ideas from their success in developing a blueprint for the Nigerian petroleum industry. To Adams' dismay and embarrassment the delegates from Nigeria, the expert in charge of strategic planning in Petronas (the national oil company of Malaysia), who was brought in to brief them, turned out to be Nigerian! The man was “one Dr Egbogah” according to Adams.

Again, Dr Felix Njoku used to be in charge of the operations of Western Atlas Geophysical in Port Harcourt in the 1990s. Western Atlas was not only one of the most consistent advertisers in Nigeria Petrobusiness, I noticed that Dr Njoku took a special liking to me and so much wanted success for the path-breaking effort of the magazine, the first commercial energy-focused magazine to be published in Nigeria.

Dr Njoku always mentioned one Dr Amaefule and a Dr Egbogah, whom he would like to introduce to me whenever they were in Nigeria. I asked, was this Dr Egbogah in Malaysia at any time? And the answer was in the affirmative. This Dr Egbogah must be somebody we should all get to know, I thought at the time. And why is the Nigerian government not looking for him to come and help out, I wondered?

You can then imagine that I almost jumped out of my skin when I was standing with Professor Joseph Ajienka in front of the tiny original campus of the Institute of Petroleum Studies and a big man - going by the number of people following him, was driven into the premises and Professor Ajienka said: “Dr Egbogah is here”. That was how I was introduced and I interviewed him for the Nigerian Energy Chronicles, another publication I promoted.

A few weeks later, he called and wanted to meet me in his office. At that meeting, he produced a copy of African Petrobusiness magazine, which he picked up at that year's Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, and was extremely impressed that I produced that magazine (alongside Nigerian Energy Chronicles).

From that point, he took a keen interest in my affairs, supporting many initiatives I started, including the Abuja Petroleum Roundtable. Sometimes he even called me into his office to scold me, headmaster style!

But you could see a strong desire in him for me to do well. Incidentally, he never knew where I came from, and I only discovered he was from Umuokpu, in Awka while shooting a documentary to commemorate his 70^th birthday in 2012!

As I interviewed people after his passing, and they gave their testimonies, I connected with all of them, because I know Dr E was in a hurry to change his environment and impact his world. He did so many things considered strange by the average Nigerian, in order to reach and empathize with everyone who needed succour and compassion. I have heard that he was watching television and one of those appeals for funds for kidney surgery was being broadcast. He called in and invited the patient’s relatives to a meeting where he paid instantly for the treatment.

I also heard the story of his encounter with a student at the Institute of

Petroleum Studies at Uniport during his one week as the first “Expert in Residence” at the university. The student was worried that his parents could not meet up with the deadline for his school fees. Dr E paid it instantly.

Samuel Ibiyemi, a Nigerian journalist told me in one of the interviews during the 2018 SPE Nigeria Conference at Eko Hotel in Lagos, that Dr E actually bought him a brand-new suit, because he did not want the reporter to be wearing a “coat” – a description of the reporter's poorly cut jacket.

What can you say then about a man like Dr Egbogah, who set up an E&P company not just as a business to make money, but to use it as a vehicle to teach and empower others?

This book has tried to put a few of the exceptional attributes of Dr E on record and acknowledge the impact he made in such a short time after returning to Nigeria - in capacity building for the petroleum industry as well as his huge investments in the “learning economy”, which he believed would prepare Nigeria and Nigerians to play their part and benefit from the global knowledge economy.

A digital memorial to Dr E is being developed and will be uploaded here early in 2023.

With dual nationality as Nigerian and Canadian, Egbogah was born on September 14, 1942, at Umuokpu, Awka in Anambra State, Nigeria; and died on June 18, 2018, in the United States - leaving staggering legacies in many fields of endeavour, especially philanthropy and investment in higher education and professional training of young Nigerians.

A world-renowned reservoir engineer, Egbogah was an authority in enhanced oil recovery and played key roles in the petroleum industry at government and professional levels in so many countries across the globe – from Malaysia, where he was the Technology Adviser at Petronas; to Libya where he was an EOR Adviser to the government of Libya and her national oil company; to Canada and the United States, where he was a notable investor and engaged with congress in many expert briefings; and his home country Nigeria, where he became Special Adviser on Petroleum Matters to two presidents – Umaru Musa Yar’ardua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.

He was also revered in the Society of Petroleum Engineers in Asia, the Americas, and Africa – where he rose to the position of Africa Regional Director. His SPE achievements were capped by his appointment as an Honorary Member, the highest membership status and honour bestowed by SPE on its members.

Notably, Egbogah had his first PhD in geology at McGill University in Canada, after obtaining a master’s degree in applied petroleum geology from Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. He was to be head-hunted by Professor Adeoye Lambo, who was then Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, to teach the pioneer students of petroleum engineering at Nigeria’s first university. He later received a PhD in petroleum engineering from the Imperial College, London.

Egbogah’s pioneering role as a petroleum engineering teacher at UI, an experience he shared with Africa’s first professor of petroleum engineering, Gabriel Kayode Falade, explains the dominance of the petroleum engineering profession – especially in academia by their mentees and former students.

Watch this space for more celebrations of DR. E as we launch the digital memorial.

EGBOGAH AS SPECIAL ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT ON PETROLEUM MATTERS WITH GOV LYEL IMOKE AND SPE CHAIR ABOLARIN ARRIVE FOR OPENING OF THE FIRST AND ONLY SPE CONFERENCE IN TINAPA CALABAR

RECEIVING THE PATHFINDERS AWARD FROM GOV TIMIPRE SILVA AT THE NIGERIA PETROLEUM GOLDEN JUBILEE AWARDS AT THE TRANSCORP HILTON, ABUJA IN AUGUST 2008.