Onyema Ugochukwu

Onyema Ugochukwu (born 9 November 1944), CON—Commander of the Order of the Niger, is a Nigerian economist, journalist, and politician. Ugochukwu served as the senior Special Adviser on Communication to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and the first Executive Chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). On 25 February 2008, an Abia State elections tribunal declared Ugochukwu the winner of the 2007 gubernatorial election and Governor-elect of Abia State. However, on 11 February 2009 an appeal court in Port Harcourt overturned the ruling, declaring that Theodore Orji of the PPA had in fact won the election.

Onyema Ugochukwu was born on 9 November 1944 in Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria. He graduated from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, with a BSc in Economics. He is married with four children.

The political turmoil which followed the first military coup in 1966 escalated into a civil war when the south-east region of Nigeria seceded as the Republic of Biafra a year later. Ugochukwu enlisted in the Biafran Army and rose to the rank of captain before the war ended in 1970.

Upon graduation from college, Ugochukwu was hired as an Economic Research Assistant by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). He remained with CBN for two years before he abandoned a promising career in economics to pursue his true passion, journalism.

Ugochukwu joined the Business Times group as an Economic Analyst and a pioneer staff of what would later become the most influential financial newspaper in Nigeria. Ugochukwu rose in the ranks to become the Editor of the Business Times newspaper (1977 to 1982). In 1983, Ugochukwu became Editor in Chief of the London-based West Africa magazine, where he wrote extensively on development issues, to provide a better understanding of the African debt crisis. He eventually returned to Nigeria to become the Editor in Chief of the Daily Times of Nigeria and he was subsequently appointed to its board as the Executive Director of Manpower and Development. He retired from newspaper journalism in 1994 as the Executive Director of Publications. Ugochukwu remained active as a media consultant for the Dow Jones Financial News Service. Throughout his distinguished career as a journalist, Ugochukwu has met and interviewed numerous Heads of States – including then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,South African President Nelson Mandela, Jamaican Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, French President Jacques Chirac, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Cuban President, Fidel Castro, Nigerian presidents Ibrahim Babangida, Muhammadu Buhari, Sani Abacha, and Abdusalami Abubakar – and presented papers on African economic and political development at various forums including Oxford University, England, and Uppsala University.

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