Okwuosa: An Outstanding Indigenous Professional
The National Productivity Order of Merit Award (NPOMA), one of Nigeria’s most coveted national honours, conferred on eminent petroleum industry captain and versatile investor, Engr. Emeka Okwuosa, amplifies his position as key pillar of support in the nation’s quest for socio-economic development.
In the letter NPC/AV/377/VIII of February 6, 2017 signed by Mrs. I. Adebimpe, the Secretary of the National Productivity Merit Award Committee, the National Productivity Centre recognised the contributions of Engr. Okwuosa;
The National Productivity Order of Merit Award is designed to affect productivity positively at both individual and corporate levels.
At the individual level, the award is intended to encourage such noble attributes as expertise in job performance, dedication, hard work, initiative, creativity, honesty, reliability, selfdiscipline, moral leadership, responsibility, punctuality, teamwork, contribution to the building of communities and organisations, and good human relations.
At the corporate level, NPOMA seeks to acknowledge organisations that are self-reliant in their adaptation and application of technology in order to guarantee for themselves cost effective operation and productivity efficiency. Also, the award recognises companies which show a trend for sustained increases over the years in such vital areas as local sourcing of raw materials, capacity utilisation, sales turnover, profitability, employee welfare schemes and training facilities.
At the latest awards which held on February 21, 2017, Engr. Okwuosa who has successfully established and groomed The Oilserv Group Limited from an indigenous service provider in the petroleum industry to a group of numerous and variegated companies, stood tall in the list of just 15 awardees selected from a total of 1,978 nomination forms sent out to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies at the Federal and State levels and also the private sector.
Acting Chairman, National Productivity Order of Merit Award, Mr. Ikechi Uko, said that the selection of the awardees was guided by the principle of integrity, openness, honesty and transparency.
Uko said that the assessment of nominees was based on a 16-point performance criteria which include job performance, expertise, dedication, creativity, initiative, responsibility, leadership and quality, among others.
He noted that corporate organisations were assessed based on an eight-point criteria including local sourcing of raw materials, employment generation, staff training, profitability, capacity utilisation and corporate social responsibility, among others.
According to President Muhammadu Buhari whose address was delivered by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the national aspiration goal is to rebuild Nigeria into a competitive, virile, strong and productive economy where the citizens are creative, innovative, responsive, accountable, incorruptible, patriotic and diligent.
All the values recognised in the NPOM Awards aptly capture the key attributes that mark out Engr. Okwuosa as an outstanding indigenous professional who has driven enterprise development with a high dose of patriotism: leading industry innovation, creating jobs, training young professionals, domesticating industry budgets for cross-sectoral linkages and positively impacting local communities with robust corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Engr. Okwuosa represents a short story of long achievements delivered with patriotic indigenous hands which he exposed to world class expertise and equipped with hands-on training that qualified them to fit into the cluster of companies that form the Oilserv Group.
With over 34 years of engineering experience in full petroleum industry service loop, teaching, project management, business administration, Engr. Okwuosa has also traversed the global business plays and accumulated multifarious experiences in different challenging terrains of the world’s continents.
He had flown Nigeria’s flag high with professional competence while in the services of Schlumberger where he functioned in different positions: from Field Engineer to Technical Manager at the company’s operations in Europe, Asia and Africa.
It is with the rich wealth of experience, blend of global technologies and innate passion for excellence that Engr. Okwuosa established and developed the Oilserv Group to localise and domesticate global industry technology and expertise for in-country utilisation. Engr. Okwuosa has expressed in numerous platforms for policy dialogue that the huge indigenous capacity gap must be closed for the country to progress towards economic diversification, industrialisation and stability.
This belief informed his commitments to partnerships with academic institutions, professional groups, training groups and industry associations to provide Nigerian youths with post graduate training, vocational skills, technology and the highly necessary cognate experience required for work place performance.
His Oilserv Limited has not only led in development and use of local expertise in industry operations, the group has also demonstrated effective local expertise with wide range of technical services that include engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) and maintenance of pipelines and facilities in the most challenging terrains in the Niger Delta.
With nearly 100 per cent indigenous workers, the company has today become a major pipeline development factor in the country, region, and continent.
The company is also the key project driver in realisation of Nigeria’s new gas infrastructure development under the ambitious Nigeria's Gas Masterplan evolved to optimise the economic gains of the country’s vast natural gas resources. Oilserv also holds sway in other petroleum industry regions across Africa: Sierra Leone, Benin Republic, Ghana, Uganda, etc.
The company’s ISO 9001:2008 certification is a loud testimony of its compliance to most stringent global quality standards and operation efficiency.
Also riding on similar global certification for high standards and efficiency, Frazimex Limited, also established by Engr. Okwuosa, is in the fray with top shelf quality services in Front End and Detailed Engineering Design Services. The company takes the services scope further to cover new areas like civil engineering, electrical services, instrumentation and related activities.
With full chain of total petroleum industry services in his service package, it is therefore only logical for Engr. Okwuosa to venture into oil and gas exploration and production with the establishment of Frazoil Exploration and Production (E&P) Limited. And despite its relatively young age among competitors, Frazoil already operates Block 1 and 3 offshore the Republic of Benin, starting off straight with the clout of a regional player.
Engr.. Okwuosa also floated the FrazPower Limited to capture the commercial opportunities in the fast developing gas-to-power markets that currently sweep across Africa, thus contributing to economic growth of the continent where natural gas is being positioned to drive quantum leap in power generation and bridge huge generation gaps. The investment in power sector is a key contribution in dismantling constraints to Nigeria’s economic development.
“The strategic vision is to deliver at least 10 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas reserves in the next 10 years leveraging sources at varying level of go-to-market readiness,” FrazPower pledges. And the company is already providing distributed power solutions to captive markets in some industrial clusters in the South-east part of the country, leveraging on micro gas liquefaction and compression technologies. The virtual pipeline solutions have since enhanced capacity utilisation at the industries by introducing smart gas delivery solutions for power generation.
Ekcel Farms Limited is one of the newest of the companies floated by Engr. Okwuosa to demonstrate that commercial opportunities abound in the acute infrastructure and facility deficits in the domestic economy.
With initial $150 million in pocket, 5000 hectares of land and estimated workforce of 2000, Ekcel Farms flaunts the potentials to become a key economic growth driver and major contributor to the nation’s gross domestic product with its mechanised industrial farms that target the high value ends of cassava and tomato production.
Another company in the Oilserv Group is Crown Energy Resources Limited which positions in solid mineral extraction with a modern quarry in Cross River State. The company delves into production of stone materials for road and sundry construction activities.
Therefore, the conglomeration of Oilserv Limited, Frazimex Limited, Frazoil Limited, FrazPower Limited, Ekcel Farms Limited and Crown Energy Resources Limited in one integrated business model with enhanced internal synergy and optimised economies of scale has unleashed efficiencies and leveraged collective potentials that established Oilserv Group as leading indigenous energy factor.
Thus, Engr. Okwuosa’s Oilserv Group has altered traditional stereotype of substandard products and low quality services that worked against indigenous companies in the past decades when foreign companies held sway.
With companies in the group, Engr. Okwuosa may have found expression to his passion for indigenous human capacity development in high technology sectors of the economy. Through the group’s Graduate Training Programmes, Engr. Okwuosa offers young Nigerian graduates the rare and elusive opportunity for hands-on training and exposure in oil and gas industry operations.
He has endowed professorial chairs in some universities, sponsored researches, built workshops and libraries and laboratories in various institutions across the country. The aim is to build a strong human resource base for national economic development.
Engr. Okwuosa is part of the powerful industry lobby group that influenced the evolution of the Nigerian Content Law in the petroleum industry with the aim to recover full control of the nation’s petroleum industry operations from the hands of fleeting multinationals.
Nigerian Content policy objectives include, among others, to arrest traditional export of Nigerian petroleum industry jobs for execution in foreign countries. The law therefore targets to enhance the petroleum industry contributions to the nation’s GDP via a strategy that deploys the huge oil and gas industry budget to reinvigorate activities in the business sectors of the domestic economy.
Engr. Okwuosa has consistently maintained that building local capacity is of strategic security and economic importance for sustainable development of the country. Therefore, he has encouraged his companies to float complementary industry specific training programmes for different levels of manpower required by industries in different sectors of the economy.
Thus while the graduate training programme targeted at building graduate capacity for project management, planning and control, operations and maintenance, quality assurance and control as well as other critical service packages, the related skills acquisition programme of Oilserv Group targets technical capacity for welding, fitting and other skills for sundry field activities.
With a lofty industry profile, Engr. Okwuosa boasts of a wealth of experience across the global industry terrain while working with multinational industry technology developers where he had marked out himself as an outstanding talent with restless aspiration to do something different. He believes that every other Nigerian graduate should have similar exposure and expertise without necessarily suffering the drudgery of traversing the world to work for businesses that hold no contribution to Nigeria’s development.
His passion for indigenous expertise defies stereotype and drives innovation among indigenous firms in the country. He justifies patronage for indigenous companies through demonstration of robust capacity to deliver world class standards in services and products; his Oilserv Group currently wrestles jobs from foreign competitors and provides opportunities for Nigerian experts.
Engr. Okwuosa’s towering industry profile is supported by solid education from a selection of the world’s best institutions, ensuring sound knowledge and full mastery of business strategies. He continues to make contributions to the development of engineering and technical professions in the country through membership of numerous bodies.
He is a member of Society of Professional Well Log Analysts (SPWLA); Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN); Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN); Pipeline Professionals Association of Nigeria (PLAN); Nigerian Institute of Directors (IoD); Society of Petroleum Engineers International (SPE); and Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE).
Engr. Okwuosa is not new to awards and recognitions. His industry footprints and contributions to capacity building in the country have earned him innumerable awards. They include Award of Excellence by the Departments of Physics, University of Nigeria (UNN, 2006); Annual OTC/PETAN Awards for Excellence 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015; US/African International Oil and Gas Leadership Award, Best of Africa 2013; Keyman Award by the Enugu Chamber of Commerce, Industry Mines and Agriculture (ECCIMA, 2014); Best CEO of the Year 2013; Best CSR Practice 2013; and Award of Excellence (Nanotechnology) (UNN, 2014).
Okwuosa also garnered other awards that include: PETAN Oil and Gas Industry Achievement Award 2014; PETAN Distinguished Achievement Award 2014; and Fidelity Bank Distinguished Customer Award 2015.
In quick succession, Okwuosa was recently inducted to the rarified zenith of the academic world with two heartfelt honorary doctorates: ESUT - Enugu State University of Technology (December, 2016) and UNN - University of Nigeria Nsukka (January, 2017).
Being an eminent Knight of Saint Christopher (KSC) of the Anglican Communion and Founder of Sir Chukwuemeka Okwuosa Foundation, he has also continued to positively impact his immediate and remote societies through scholarships, poverty alleviation programme and limitless interventions in development of social facilities and infrastructure to alleviate the suffering of the people.
It is clearly obvious that Engr. Emeka Okwuosa has a speedy flight to the heights of professionalism, and has maintained a frontline position in deepening the indigenous capacity for delivery of world’s toughest industry jobs in line with world class standards and best practices while remaining socially responsible.
It is therefore only rational and justified that today the country’s best professional groups, industry groups, trainers and academic institutions salute his many pioneer roles and outstanding contributions to the advancement of professional excellence, business best practices and audacious strides in indigenous capacity development.
It is not surprising therefore that the National Productivity Centre once again counted Engr. Emeka Okwuosa among the 15 individuals and five organisations found outstanding and subsequently recommended for government conferment of the NPOM Awards.
In appreciating contributions of Engr. Okwuosa and other awardees, Vice President Osinbajo commended the innovation and creativity of the recipients.
“Our nation is greatly enriched and ennobled by your hard work, enterprise, creativity and remarkable productivity,’’ the Vice President declared.