Business
Hon. Ugo Nwaokoro, Nigerian Born Deputy Mayor of Newark is ‘NAIJA STANDARD Man of the Year 2016’
*PERSONS OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNERS: Dr Osato Osemwengie, Nigerian born America’s Expert in NASA Deep Space Robotics, Dr Bennet Ifeakandu Omalu, Nigerian-American leading Physician/Neuropathologist & Dr Oluyinka Olutoye, foremost Paediatrics Surgeon in Texas
*PLUS: Their Inspiring Success stories, Honors and Other Accomplishments
THEY ARE ALL NIGERIAN BORN with a dual nationality of United States of America. In their various chosen professions and capacities have all brought glory to Africa’s most populous nation. They are all men of proven substance, towering integrity, highly respected all over America, other parts of the world for their ingenious and unparalleled cerebral intelligence. They are all achievers in their own rights, without a single strand of scandal either at work or outside their profession. In a difficult, most compelling analysis, the Editorial Board of NAIJA STANDARD Newspapercomprising of all Editors and Directors unanimously adjudged Honorable Ugo Nwaokoro,wave-making Nigerian born Deputy Mayor of Newark in New Jersey asNAIJA STANDARD Newspaper Man of the Year 2016 Winner.
Ugo, a soft-spoken thinker, humble with utmost dedication to the good service of humanity with clear-directional lead by Mayor Ras Baraka has ensured that Newark is home to more than 280,000 residents and a large international immigrant community. This is a major state in the whole of America where legal Africans from various nations, in their different languages who naturalized as African-Americans lawfully co-exist peacefully without any strife, arguments or violence.
Office of the Mayor in City of Newark situated along 920 Broad Street, especially the International Relations and Diaspora Affairs’ office has daily become a beehive of activities, as Ugo leads the transformation ideology in New Jersey which has made these various tribes to live together by way of one-big-family.
Ugo’s positively-impacting economic policies have cohesively brought the people of different colors, ethnic backgrounds and religious varieties together. Today, he is seeing in America as the invincible hand behind these lofty accomplishments.
PERSONS OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNERS
In the ‘Persons of the Year Award’ category, three Nigerian-Americans stand out in the Diaspora, they are: Dr Osato Osemwengie, Nigerian born America’s Expert in NASA Deep Space Robotics, Dr Bennet Omalu, Nigerian-American leading Physician/Neuropathologist & Dr Oluyinka Olutoye, foremost Paediatrics Surgeon in Texas.
Dr Osato Osemwengie, the brain behind America’s drone creativity working in The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at Space Electromechanics Inc, having studied Unmanned Aircraft Systems The Ohio State University, University of Cincinnati, University of New York and Regis University remains one of the shining lights that ever came out of Nigeria.
He is originally from Edo state is really making Nigeria proud, flying high the flag of Africa’s most populous black nation here in United States of America. He is an embodiment of excellence in the academic circle of highest repute, spent his working life in academia.
Osemwengie, a focused and detribalized Nigerian believes education is the strongest weapon to fight ignorance and fought poverty. Having accomplished so much in the education sector in America, he had bagged six Masters degree in various disciplines and pursuing his fourth PhD at the University of Texas, Dallas.
He is a Nigerian who builds drones for the United States Army, bags his 6th Masters degree, set for his 7th Masters pursuing his 4th PhD. Excitedly, he shared his photos with the following caption: “6 master degrees, not bad. I was in the State of Ohio on Monday December 12th, 2016 for my Masters of Business Administration (MBA) graduation. This is my 6th master degree and will begin work on my 7th master degree in January 2017, and my 4th Ph.D. degree at University of Texas at Dallas in September of 2017. You know the proverb, ‘All work and no play makes jack a dull boy’ well, for me, all work and my play is acquiring graduate degrees. Learning is relaxing and takes my mind of my job projects.”
Dr Bennet Omalu, a foremost forensic pathologist who identified and named a brain disease directly related to high impact sports called the National Football League’s Play Smart, while deriding Play Safe initiative a sham, is a highly successful, cerebral Nigerian-American Physician who discovered and named Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive, irreversible, degenerative disease in people – mostly athletes — who have had a severe blow or repeated blows to the head. In a remarkable lecture at Westminster College’s two -day Hancock Symposium last year, he once reportedly said: “Nothing will change since itssymptoms can appear as many as 40 years after the damage was done.”
Omalu earlier portrayed by actor Will Smith in the 2015 movie Concussion told the audience how the NFL “professionally ostracized” him and tried to discredit him when he discovered and announced CTE.
Emphatically, he states that “Based on what we now know, children under the age of 18 should not be allowed to play football, hockey, box, wrestle or participate in other contact sports because such body contact can literally rattle the youths’ brains “that are like floating balloons inside their skulls.”
Omalu, a member of the Igbo (or Ibo) tribe, is the Chief Medical Examiner of San Joaquin County, CA, serves as a Clinical Professor and Associate Physician Diplomate at the University of California-Davis Medical Center, Department of Medical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
Dr Oluyinka Olutoye, is a Nigerian born American Paediatrics Surgeon in Texas, who hadFellowship in Pediatric Surgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the university of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
Olutoye worked in conjunction with Dr. Darrell Cass, his surgeon partner when they performed an operation on a pregnant woman that had tumour and successfully removed her 23 weeks old baby, extract the tumour, and returned the baby back into the mother’s womb; while the baby developed and was finally given birth to at 36 weeks as a normal child without any Cesarian section.
http://nigeriastandardnewspaper.com/ng/we-performed-historic-feat-in-modern-medicine-on-tumour-infested-pregnant-mothers-womb-dr-oluyinka-olutoye-nigerian-surgeon-in-texas-had-fellowship-in-pediatric-surgery-at-childre/
Dr. Olutoye whose praise will continue to be on the lips of people for a long time to come had been trending on the social media across the world. This news about the Nigerian surgeon became viral sensation after the information about a baby that was born twice was shared.
Olutoye and Cass, carried out an operation on a baby at 23 weeks. The baby was removed from her mother’s womb when they discovered she was suffering from a tumour known as sacrococcygeal teratoma. The operation was successfully carried out and the baby was returned back. Amazingly, the baby healed and continued to grow until she was born again at 36 weeks. This is a remarkable feat in modern medicine. It is exciting to know that a Nigerian surgeon was part of this setup. Lynlee Hope was given a chance to be born normal because of the surgeons who tried their best possible. Olutoye happens to be the co-director of the Texas children’s fetal center and fetal surgery team member.
This well praised doctor received his medical degree in 1988 from the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He proceeded to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond where he got his PhD in anatomy in 1996.
It was at the medical college of Virginia hospitals that he completed his residency in general surgery. His fellowship was done in pediatric surgery at the children’s hospital of Philadelphia and the university of Pennsylvania school of medicine in Philadelphia. As a member of the international fetal medicine and surgery society, Olutoye is also a member of the surgical section of the American academy of pediatrics and American college of surgeons. As a Nigerian, he has come a long way when it comes to medicine. Without doubt, this humble Nigerian surgeon has brought glory to Nigeria.
NNPCL and Corruption’s Final Throes
By Pius Olasanmi
In the twilight of the Obasanjo administration, when Nigerians were still capable of being outraged, when Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries was a buzzword that still held some mysticism to bamboozle citizens, during a conversation, a certain man said something profound. The man said, “As a businessman, if I were the owner of these refineries, knowing that they are three decades old, I would take the last money I have, hire bulldozers, raze them to the ground, and obtain loans to build new ones.”
When we pressed him further on why he would engage in such waste, he explained that repairing the refineries is the real waste. He explained that even if the TAM were honestly carried out, a thirty-year-old refinery would never compete favourably with a new one that would integrate contemporary technology. Operating at its best, such a refinery would never be comparatively more efficient. It is therefore pointless to have spent another one naira on the refineries at that point.
A few months later, I had a conversation with a then-lawmaker on an entirely different matter. I mentioned that the National Assembly has failed by not crafting legislation that would criminalise and punish public office holders who foist wrong decisions on the country. The logic: a public office holder need not steal to be punished, wrong decisions should attract penalties for an office holder who opts for the worst of all options when there are less injurious ones.
These established premises speak to the ongoing nauseating efforts at revisionism by those who wrecked the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and its previous iteration, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Notably, this campaign to rewrite history is traceable to Engineer Mele Kolo Kyari, the disgraced immediate past Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL and his hirelings. They have suffocated the news and the public opinion space with even more lies than they spun while in office.
The Saint Kyari campaign is anchored on convincing Nigerians that the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna Refineries were fully functional when he was booted out of office. So brazen is the campaign that one of its talking heads challenged the group chief executive officer (GCEO), Engr. Bayo Ojulari, to “inform Nigerians categorically what happened to the functioning refineries he inherited from his predecessor, Engr. Mele Kyari.” The effrontery.
We have not forgotten so soon the charade that followed the baffling claim that Nigeria has spent $2.8 billion on the repair of the refineries, while they are not churning out even a single litre of refined product among them. Saint Kyari and his goons played all manner of tricks, all of which embarrassed President Bola Tinubu, who had counted on ticking off the return to productivity of the refineries as part of his achievements, only to realise that he was deceived into celebrating phantoms. Tragic.
Lest we forget, 200 trucks were arranged as props in a well-directed video clip to celebrate the re-streaming of the Port Harcourt Refinery. The disappointment. Nigerians were to learn from several reports that the Port Harcourt refinery was not producing and was instead using old, stored petroleum products to load trucks. Worse still, the Kyari crew was passing off sanction-tainted Russian-sourced crude oil refined in Malta as locally refined products. More insult was piled on the assault on our collective sensibility with the lies that the Port Harcourt Refinery exported semi-finished products. Brazen.
Meanwhile, Kyari and his hirelings called those who pointed out or protested these glaring scams all manner of names. They hid behind industry technicalities and jargon to create the impression that those of us who knew Nigerians were being robbed did not understand what we were saying. The point remains that a $2.8 billion investment can potentially build a refinery with a capacity of around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Of course, the actual capacity of such a refinery will depend on various factors, including the complexity of the refinery, the technology used, and the location. That is the amount that Kyari’s regime at the NNPCL took and did not give Nigerians refined products.
Fast forward to Kyari’s sack and the appointment of Engineer Bayo Ojulari, who has demonstrated that things can indeed be done differently. Kyari’s exit was expectedly followed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) going after him and his associates. The extent of the theft is better understood against the backdrop of N80 billion being found in the bank account of one of his associates. They went on the run.
Perhaps because the EFCC was biding its time on securing international warrants for the arrests of these characters on the lam, they have become emboldened. They have decided to fight back and rewrite the story of their participation in the greatest fraud against Nigerians. Engineer Ojulari’s renewed mindset, which is entrenching a semblance of the transparency Nigerians demand, became their natural target. The demons that once roamed around the corporation came out with malevolence. They started spinning stories of corruption to tarnish the incumbent who refused to hide their crimes. The objective: bring Ojulari down. But alas, he is winning the war as it stands.
His innocence is proven, and it is glaring that those who want him out are mere charlatans who can no longer ply their corrupt wares because of the impact of the new reforms. Corruption in the NNPCL is in its final throes. The fake news being unleashed against the incumbent leadership is akin to corruption’s last kicks as reforms in the sector strangulate it and its practitioners. The reforms must take place in the NNPCL, whether the industry demons like it or not.
As a parting shot, Kyari and his associates would do well to prepare their defence. In addition to accounting for the $2.8 billion they laundered in the name of repairing the moribund refineries, they must also answer for the poor decision to fix that which is irretrievably broken. Awarding contracts for Turn Around Maintenance of 59-year-old refineries that a right-thinking person had suggested should be demolished almost twenty years ago, when they were only 30 years old, is criminal. Trying to deceive Nigerians that the fake repairs worked is treason.
Olasanmi is a public affairs analyst writing from Lagos.
GRANDIS 5STAR LUXURY APARTMENT & SUITES SET TO REDEFINE LIVING IN VICTORIA ISLAND
Set to Rise elegantly against the Lagos skyline, is the Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites. According to Adejuwon Ademola, The General Manager of the Development company, it is more than just a residential building
“it’s a lifestyle statement. Standing 17 floors high in the heart of Victoria Island, this revolutionary masterpiece of modern architecture will offer a panoramic 360° view of Eko Atlantic, Victoria Island, and Ikoyi, transforming every apartment into an exclusive penthouse experience for the world’s most discerning elite.”
Developed by Dumarco Construction Limited, a globally acclaimed company with decades of delivering complex, high-value projects in the highly regulated petroleum, oil, and gas industries, Grandis 5Star brings unmatched international safety standards, uncompromising quality, and timeless elegance into Nigeria’s luxury property market.
> “When you live in Grandis, you’re not just buying a home—you’re investing in peace of mind, world-class safety, and an effortless luxury experience that will remain pristine for decades,” says Adejuwon A. Ademola, General Manager of Dumarco Construction Limited.
The Gold Standard in Safety and Quality
Dumarco’s roots in the oil and gas sector mean the company operates to some of the strictest safety protocols in the world. Every stage—from conceptualization, design, construction, to long-term maintenance—follows internationally accepted procedures and quality assurance measures. Cutting corners is simply not in Dumarco’s vocabulary.
> “In the oil and gas industry, there’s no room for compromise. We’ve brought that same discipline and zero-tolerance for mediocrity into property development,” says Ademola. “That’s why Grandis will be one of the safest and most enduring residential developments in Nigeria.”
To ensure transparency and prevent (project complacency), Dumarco deliberately separates the developer, contractor, and consultant roles, engaging only the most competent professionals in each respective field. Dumarco’s project team includes globally recognized contractors such as Julius Berger, Cappa & D’Alberto, and Elalan, Migliore Construczione & Tecniche (MC&T) and their partners VENCO IMTIAZ CONTRACTING COMPANY (VICC) based in Dubai, UAE, Business Contracting Limited, alongside leading consultants like Morgan Omanitan & Abe, LAMBERT, and James Cubitt.
Grandis – Investments, appreciation, returns and profitability
Our selection process for the location of the project alone was pains-taking and completely thorough scientific process. Top professional companies were employed to conduct a scientific data acquisition and analytical survey of the entire Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki and Eko Atlantic before a project site is selected. Analyzing and acquiring areas developmental charts and trends, studying and gathering historical and present sale prices, rental charge and occupancy rates over a 50 year period from every individual street before the selection of the location of any of our developments especially true for the Grandis Project
He adds,
“Our clients and residents can be rest assured that the location of Grandis has been scientifically proven through all existing data to provide our clients with a 100% occupancy rate, highest developmental location, highest rental income and investment returns. ”
The Grandis Experience
Located minutes away from international corporate headquarters, embassies, and landmarks such as Eko Hotel, Radisson Blu, and the Radisson Red, Grandis offers unmatched convenience for professionals, diplomats, and high-net-worth individuals. Every residence is designed for both indulgence and efficiency, with high-grade finishes, smart-home systems, and private amenities that ensure seamless living.
From sunrise over the Atlantic to the glittering Lagos night skyline, residents will enjoy uninterrupted luxury, supported by discreet and highly trained staff, advanced security systems, and a design that prioritizes comfort and privacy.
> “We designed Grandis for people who want everything—security, elegance, convenience, and the assurance that their home will look as spectacular in 20 years as it does on day one,” Ademola notes.
A Legacy That Lasts
With its combination of visionary architecture, peerless safety, and meticulous maintenance planning, Grandis is built to remain iconic for generations. Thanks to Dumarco’s meticulous approach, the building’s service charges are expected to remain low while its value and appeal continue to appreciate over time.
In a market often marred by shortcuts and substandard practices, Mr Ademola says
Grandis stands as a beacon of what luxury living should be—safe, spectacular, and built to last.
“Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites — Where safety meets sophistication, and every detail is designed for a life well-lived.”
He added
Website -www.dumarcoltd.com
Project website – www.26idowutaylor.com
Email [email protected]
Tel / WhatsApp +234 9077777883
GM – Adejuwon A. Ademola
celebrity radar - gossips
Nationwide Talent, One Broadcaster: Tinubu Picks Pedro, Bello, Din, Mohammed to Lead NTA
Tinubu Overhauls NTA Leadership: Media Powerhouse Rotimi Pedro Takes Helm as DG
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has announced a major shake-up at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), appointing renowned media executive Rotimi Richard Pedro as the new Director-General in a move widely seen as a bold step toward modernising the state broadcaster.
Pedro, a Lagos native, brings nearly 30 years of expertise in broadcasting, sports rights, and marketing communications across Africa, the UK, and the Middle East. A trained entertainment and intellectual property lawyer, he also holds an MSc in Investment Management and Finance from City University Business School, London.
In 1995, Pedro founded Optima Sports Management International (OSMI), which rose to become one of Africa’s leading sports content providers—distributing premium events such as the English Premier League, UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, and CAF competitions to audiences in over 40 countries.
His career highlights include top roles at Bloomberg Television Africa and Rapid Blue Format, as well as advisory work for FIFA, UEFA, Fremantle Media, and the African Union of Broadcasters (AUB). At the AUB, he was instrumental in securing exclusive pan-African free-to-air media rights for all CAF competitions.
Alongside Pedro’s appointment, Tinubu named Karimah Bello from Katsina State as Executive Director of Marketing, Stella Din from Plateau State as Executive Director of News, and Sophia Issa Mohammed from Adamawa State as Managing Director of NTA Enterprises Limited.
Industry insiders credit Pedro with building commercially viable broadcast platforms, driving sponsorship growth, and delivering world-class content to African audiences. His appointment marks one of the most significant leadership changes at NTA in years—signalling the government’s intent to strengthen the broadcaster’s competitiveness in a fast-evolving media landscape.
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