Bart Nnaji, the founder and chairman of the Geometric Power Group,is set to receive an honorary doctoral degree from Gregory University, a leading Nigerian private university in Uturu, Abia State, during its 9th graduation ceremony on Saturday, December 14, 2024.
According to Vincent Maliki, the university registrar, Nnaji, recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), the country’s highest honour for academic attainment, is being recognized for his outstanding contributions to national development. He led the building of Nigeria’s foremost electric integrated power project in Aba, which supplies electricity to nine of the 17 local government areas in Abia State.
Nnaji, a former Minister of Power, has also been the Minister of Science and Technology and was recognised as one of the top academic engineers in the world in robotics and artificial intelligence when he was a mechanical and industrial engineering researcher.
“Professor Nnaji is deserving of every honour”, declared Tunde MacAlabi, the chairman of the Africa Investment and Trade Summit and Exhibition (AITE) in Lagos, on hearing of the honorary award.
MacAlabi, whose firm has been promoting the annual Nigeria Investment Summit in New York and other American cities, said, “I have known him for long, even before he was in 1993 named Distinguished Professor in Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, the first Black person to be so honoured in American history, and then proceeded to the University of Pittsburgh where he led a consortium of universities to establish the e-Design Centre funded by the United States National Science Foundation”.
Nnaji is currently leading a team of scientists to establish a robotics and artificial research centre in Nigeria, having just been cleared by the Nigerian government to set up the institute after three years of screening.
Nnaji is a rare gift to Nigeria, according to Salisu Mohammed, a former Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) secretary general who worked with him on the Presidential Task Force on Power (PTFP) which Nnaji headed as chairman and special adviser to the President on Power before he became the Minister of Power in 2011.
Professor Onyii Nwagbara of the Nile University in Abuja has expressed delight at the honorary doctorate award Professor Nnaji has received.
Nwagbara, an indigene of Abia State, says “We are proud that Gregory University is the second university in our beloved state to bestow the award on him, the first being Michael Okpara University of Agriculture at Umudike, Umuahia, some 12 years ago”,.
He added: “The honour from Gregory University “will be Nnaji’s seventh”.
Among Nigerian universities that have conferred honorary doctorates on Nnaji are the Federal University of Technology, Yola, Adamawa State; the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State; Bells University of Technology, Otta, Ogun State; Michael and Cecilia Ibru University near Warri, Delta State; as well as the Enugu State University of Technology, Enugu.
“Professor Nnaji is fiercely nationalistic in a most profound manner”, observed Ody Chukwube, a former press secretary to the Anambra State governor who is now a public affairs consultant in Abuja.
Chukwube added, “Despite entreaties to get the citizenship of a country I wouldn’t like to name here, he insisted on having only the Nigerian passport.
“This is a very important lesson to all wealthy men and women who are doing everything possible to acquire the citizenships of even Third World nations, including investing millions of dollars in those countries.”
