The passing of Oziuzo Nnewi, Engineer Ajulu Gilbert Uzodike — By Oduche Azih

On Friday October 4, 2024, the mortal remains of my dear friend from childhood, Ajulu Uzodike, will be committed to mother earth. I have found writing about Ajulu in the past tense to be a most difficult assignment. Among other things, his passing after a rather brief period of ill-health brings starkly to bear the matter of Impending Mortality that confronts all of us. Our agemates clocked threescore and ten a couple of years ago. This reset our awareness and priorities.

It is therefore with gratitude that we must seriously set our ducklings in line. From what I do know, Ajulu had put his house in order.

Ajulu and I have been through a lot together, starting from our first days in 1962, aged barely 12. We met up in Class 1 in secondary school at the College of the Immaculate Conception, in Enugu. No one needs reminding that this was one of top Catholic secondary schools in the then Eastern Region of Nigeria. Records indicate that our 1966 Set was probably the most competitive since the founding in the 1940s. Gilbert, as he was popularly called, fitted in very well with no airs, despite what we all later understood to be his upper middle class background. I didn’t know of any other classmate whose dad was an engineer. In a different class we had one with a Medical Doctor father. That was just about it.

Please note that everybody in our Class 5A, without exception, obtained a Grade 1 with aggregate scores bunched up at the uppermost end of Excellence. Ajulu was right up there with many other high-fliers.

In our final year we had hosted a number of Igbo returnees from the rest of Nigeria escaping from the 1966/67 Pogroms. As the crises spun out of control, Ajulu joined the Biafran Army to defend the motherland like many orhers. He saw combat!

At a point he was an officer at the Biafran Army School of Infantry at BSC, Orlu.

With the war over, we survivors reunited at the University of Lagos in September 1970. An appreciable number of our Class of ’66 ended up in the Faculty of Engineering in Akoka. Joseph Anochie and my humble self were among that number. New friends and professional colleagues swelled our circle of close acquaintances. Fabian Nnadozie, Babatunde Johnson, Nneji Sam Okorie, Yomi Lawson, Cletus Duru, Ik Dyna Otigbuo, David ‘Segun Aderibigbe, Olu Lafe, Ambrose Okoro, Abayomi Collins, to mention just a few.

After graduation in May/June 1974, we spread out for the novel NYSC Program of which we were the second set. This year 2024 actually marks the 50th anniversary of our call-up. Ajulu had served at the then new University of Calabar.

With the service year over the true dispersal commenced in ernest. Ajulu, who unlike most seemed to know quite early where he was headed, took off for Harvard Business School for his MBA. During the summer of the first year, he interned with SKOUP & COMPANY in Enugu, founded by the renowned Economist Dr Patrick Okigbo. He subsequently finished his senior year at HBS and was head-hunted by the then rapidly growing US materials science company Raychem Corporation.

Ajulu was ensconced in his comfortable lodgings with his then new wife Oliaku, in Foster City, CA, taking in the orientations and trainings at Raychem Corporate and R&D headquarters in Menlo Park, when I showed up in September 1977 for my graduate studies at nearby Stanford University. That provided me with a very soft landing for someone who just departed Enugu a week earlier.

To cut the long story short, four years later, Ajulu came back to California for me.

What are friends for?

That was how I become part of the Raychem story and subsequent developments credited to this Serial Entrepreneur Engr, Chief Ajulu Gilbert Uzodike, OZIUZO NNEWI! . Engr Fabian Nnadozie who was there with him from the very beginning can fill in the blank spaces.

As we commit Ajulu to mother earth, may we seize the opportunity to celebrate what is possible, highlight his achievements and rededicate our individual and group commitments to overcome the limitations of our inherited social, political and economic structure and experiences. . . And pull our reluctant society and country, (nation or not), up by the bootstraps.

One of the pioneer achievements of Ajulu was in the area of Capital Formation. It is amazing how he overcame the standard individualism of the Igbo and Nnewi business elite in order to raise the initial capital that Cutix Limited neeed. Such a move was unheard of, especially spearheaded by one so young. It is possible that once he got our Akoka neighbour Chief R C Onyeje on board, everybody else fell in line. Honestly I have no indication to that effect. Meanwhile, today, Cutix Plc ia a frontline indigenous manufacturer of Electrical wires, cables and accessories.

In a public forum decades ago, Uzodike had mentioned the idea of government deliberately cultivating and nurturing UNICORNS at a time the word hadn’t even been coined. The very concept of Unicorns in business parlance, have since been typically associated with rampaging Asian start-ups.

In Ajulu’s memory, we must use every opportunity to advance such lofty goals, whether we are inside or outside of government.

I had cause to repeat these sentiments of Ajulu on the joyous occasion of the continuing 40th Anniversary Celebrations of the founding of Cutix Plc just last year. Little did I know that my friend would soon leave it all to join his ancestors. As the news of his passing broke on June 7, 2024, I recall that his youngest daughter fully aware of our long-term mutual bond actually consoled me. Thanks Chidimma! . I appreciated that, very very much.

Meanwhile I cannot hide my pride in having been associated with Engr Uzodike over these past 6 decades including the tumultuous and uncertain days of the founding of Cutix Plc, when General Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Program hung over all like an ominous dark shroud.

Ajulu, biko jee nke oma!
May your adventurous soul rest in perfect peace till we meet to part no more.

Our remaining members of the CIC, Enugu, Class of 1966 and the proud Alumni colleagues of UNILAG bid you farewell.

Engr Oduche Azih
Ogbunike

310982