How Dr Ogbobe is Leveraging on Power of Sports to Fashion New PRODA in Enugu

By Amaechi Agbo

In this exclusive interview, the Director General, Projects Development Institute PRODA Engr. Dr. Peter Okwudilichukwu Ogbobe speaks on how he is leveraging on the power of sports to forester unit and achieve the mandate of the institute.
The Institute on Wednesday last week kicked off its third edition of PRODA Sports Festival.
Dr Ogbobe bared his mind on the importance of the festival and how he has championed a new PRODA with few years in office
Background
My name is Engineer Doctor Peter Okwudilichukwu Ogbobe. I am from Alu-uno, in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State. And my career spans over the years . I started my career as a public servant from the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi, Lagos. I moved to National Board for Technology Incubation, where I spent most of my career for close to 25 years. Before that, I had my first degree at University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical and Proxy Engineering from Nnamdi Azikwe University, Awka, and then my Ph.D Mechatronics Engineering at the prestigious university in China. That is a little about myself, I participated in the DG-ship process of PRODA, as God will have it, this is where I am today and because of my study in china, I did a lot of work in Robotics Engineering, space and aviation.
PRODA sports festival
Yes, by the special grace of God, we’ll continue to have it as far as God keeps us alive and I’m still here. Apart from the sports festival, we also have end of the year party, which we started three years ago, we’ve done it twice, we’ll also do it this year again. We usually have end of the year party in which we give merit awards to the best deserving staff. These are parts of social activities we usually do to fraternise. The essence of all this is to reduce elements of fictionalisation, we are a family and we need to remain bonded and to keep fit. Only a healthy staff can work optimally, so we prioritise sports in our programmes.
2025 PRODA Sports Festival
“It kicked off on Wednesday. In the competition, everybody is a winner, because we want to have fun. Make sure that you don’t injure anybody. The main purpose of the game is for us to have a sense of communality, come together, play together and then leave office environment and relate as one family, one brother, sister, devoid of any rancour, selfishness and quarrels
Which Sport events are you participating in?
Well, I participate in all of them. I have interest in football, I played football. I played some of the sports activities but if you are talking of interest, my interest is football and table tennis. I can play table tennis well but I don’t know how to play football but I love football, and I watch it. Anywhere they are playing football – I go to Calabar those days, anytime Super Eagles play, to watch them. I love football, I have never played it, but table tennis I can play it very well.
Which club do you support in Nigeria?
Rangers, of course. They know me as one of their great supporters. There was a time I featured on their Facebook page. I watch, unless, if I’m not in Enugu, if I’m in Enugu, I must watch; sometimes if I was in Abuja in the office and I hear that Rangers have a match, I’ll leave on Sunday, so that I will be able to watch Rangers match. There was a time I drove to Uyo to watch Rangers play. The accident I had when I was young, was because I was going to watch football, that landed me in orthopaedic.
Assessment of Rangers performance in the NPFL
Well it was okay, it wasn’t wonderfully well but as a defending champion last season, they supposed to have done more than what they did, but towards the end of the league they started losing steep and weren’t driving as much as we were expecting them to drive. Initially, they were doing very well, for reasons best known to the coach and the management. But the most annoying one is when they were playing with Kano Pillars, when they were losing 4-0 before they made it 4-3, they lost close to six matches at home and that was not wonderful.
What Rangers should do
Just go to market and make sure they buy good product.
Would you allow your children play football?
I’ll leave them because I allow them to choose what they want, it is only my second son that was interested in being a goalkeeper. I bought him goalkeeper materials but suddenly he came back and said he wants to go into basketball, that I should buy him basketball kits for him. I did because I like sports and encouraged him to go into sporting activity, but what I like most is football. If any of my children chooses to go into football, I would prefer refereeing. I like when you are a referee – to be fair and have control of what you are doing. Referees are highly disciplined. Most referees are not biased and I like unbiased persons that is why in PRODA, I operate on three principles.
First – Fairness, Equity and Justice. Whatever I am doing, I am guided by these three principles. How fair is what you are doing, and is there any element of justice in it? Referee has the control of everyone in that field, he can give a spectator red card to leave the pitch. One single person just having control of over, maybe 40,000 persons. So when I was younger, if I was getting interest, I would have gone into refereeing. I’m even thinking of sponsoring this years’ Christmas football competition match in my village.
So if you go to Rangers stand they know me very well, if you go to Press stand, they know me very well.
You clocked 3 years in office in May, would you like sharing your experiences during this period with us?
First and foremost, I have to thank you for having me and thank you for taking your time to come to PRODA and then have this interaction with me. It is something we appreciate and we are not taking it for granted. I have been, just like every facet of any man endeavour, it has been very challenging, it has its own ups and downs. So that when you aggregate all, you can have a conclusion that we have not fared badly. On my resumption, we had a very wonderful reception and I hope that the end shall be better than the beginning which has been a motivating factor for me to try as much as I can, to make sure that there is transformation in the institute.
First thing I try to do was to bring in some elements of communality because I realized on resumption that there were fractions among the staff. It were as if some are for Paul and some are for Apollos. For a research institute like PRODA, where there is no harmony, there is no relationship, where there is no connection, there is not going to be much output. So what we did first was to break the element of segmentation and bring everybody together and have a common purpose. PRODA is a research institute and what becomes our results is our research output.
We introduced a lot of restructuring parameters in order to solidify the commonality within us and enhance cooperation. We initiated “Staff of the Year Award” to encourage everyone to put in their best at work. Before then, we used have annual productive team mate award, best research team and the best research publisher, we sustained them. The essence of bringing that is to make people to be motivated. The best staff is produced through nomination by the staff members. Then a panel will sit on the nominees and decide based on their statistics. This, no doubt, has upgraded the work ethics and professionalism in the institute, people now come together even if you don’t like someone’s face and the person is working hard, everybody knows who is working and who is not working, and it has increased efficiency and productivity. We have a lot of ongoing projects.
We are also trying to change the face of PRODA as well as the narratives for people to know what we are doing. So, the major thing is that we established unity in the institute because without it, nothing else would work because a divided house will achieve nothing.
What is your mandate as an Institute?
PRODA as the name implies means Project Development Institute, formerly agency It has a very broad mandate. When it was established, it initially used to be Eastern State Development Agency and that was far back as 1971 to research materials on sciences, engineering, aggro-processing, technologies, even earth materials. It was established in 1977, during the dis-centralization of the Eastern states. It was then taken over by the federal government changing it to Project Development Institute however, the acronym, PRODA remained, because it has already made a name and they want the name to be maintained.
How relevant is PRODA to the national economy?
If you look closely at what we have been able to achieve, you will know that PRODA is very much relevant to the national economy. For instance, we’ve gone into what we now call briquette, using saw dust, using rice husk. If you’ve ever taken a trip to rice mill, you will see a whole heap of the rice husk. Right now we converting the rice husk to briquettes so as to reduce attacks on the forest. While most countries are planting trees, we are cutting our own trees. The essence of that briquettes is to reduce tree cutting in our communities and fight climate change. If you also go to saw mill, you will see a heap of sawdust, we carbonize them first and then briquette it. What I mean by to ‘carbonize it’ is by making sure that it is smokeless.
We’ve also gone further to produce a stove using briquette. Come to aggro-processing, PRODA is at the fore-front of developing aggro-processing machines across the nation, a whole lot of aggro flow lines, from palm oil processing beginning from what we call the bunchier to where you now get your oil. Same thing with cassava, we have a complete flow-line for cashew nut and peanut.
On the area of earth materials technologies – that is ceramics, if you come to Enugu, we have a whole lot of deposit of clays, those clays we used to produce facial products. Recently we have also used stone to produce powder. We are also researching on heating ions in Nigeria. We have heating masons laboratory where most of our phones, all those small batteries, they are also made of heating masons. These days people are moving away from tubular battery that uses distilled water to heating ions. All these contribute to the economic as well as national development.
Are you satisfied with where PRODA is now?
No, because I see life as a journey, not a destination. If you have a destination, you will know where you are going but journey is endless. For me, we’ve not even started not to say that I’m satisfied with what we’ve done. As far as I’m concerned, we are just starting. I recall that when I came, there was this placard, the one I saw that really touched me and it says, “May your days be remembered like that of Professor Godwin Ezekwe.” If you go around, anything anybody knows about PRODA is when Professor Ezekwe was here, therefore, we’ve not started not to talk of being satisfied with what we have done.
Are you intimidated by that reference?
Intimidated No. Rather I am motivated. It’s become a motivating factor because you see yourself as privileged to wear the same shoes that renowned Professor Ezekwe wore. In life, we keep aspiring but the greatest thing is that Professor Ezekwe left a legacy that is remembered and I am deeply grateful because I see myself privileged to wear the shoe he wore years ago. He laid the foundation for where PRODA is today, if I surpass it very fine, it is something that I am seeing as a journey. Just like I said, it is a journey and that is why we are not satisfied by where we are now.
What do you want to be remembered for when you leave office?
I’d like to be remembered as a man that came with three principles in mind, to be fair, bringing equity and justice because I don’t care irrespective of where you are, even if you are answering the same name with me, as long as you are not helping me to succeed, you are not my friend nor brother. I also want to be remembered as coming to a place that is fractionalized, and try as much as I can to make sure we also come together, and then if I’m able to achieve that. And if you go through, if you google, just like they rank institute, PRODA is not ranked as a research institute in the world, I will also try as much as I can, no matter the number of position we fall, let our name enter to be known in the World. If we are able to achieve this, and then development human capacity because why human capacity is important is because we can’t give what we don’t have.