It takes more than nerdy audacity to undertake the tackling of a subject as complex as Professor Bart Nnaji as he turns 70 on Monday, July 13, in this year of Our Lord.
One has to from the start get to grips with an impossible wunderkind who at barely three years of age or so deigned to buy the biggest lorry called “Gwongworo” with the currency of least value, a farthing!
Bart paid for the lorry of his dream and was waiting eagerly for the delivery only to be denied. His doting mother had to apply all her wits to console the darling son.
Coddling mother-care for young Bart would in time become a distraction such that the boy did not care for school and scored zero in arithmetic. The mother had to come to school with the charge that it’s the teacher that scored zero and not her beloved son!
To end the bad matter, Bart had to be rescued from his mother and sent to live with his uncle who was a teacher.
It worked magic. Bart started topping his class, and was duly promoted to skip a class because of his genius.
His progress was delayed because of the crisis of the 1966 coups in Nigeria and the concomitant advent of the 1967-1970 Biafra war. Bart and the family bore the brunt of the tragic war as refugees before returning to their hometown which had come under the control of Nigeria’s federal forces.
Bart’s schooling resumed in earnest in St Patrick’s College, Emene, and he passed out with distinction.
A remarkable development in Bart’s final year in school was his taking to sports during the Inter-House Sports Competition and dusting established athletes.
He was given a job at the Sports Council in Enugu to represent the then East Central State in national competitions.
Bart’s breakthrough manifested when he was offered a sports scholarship to study in St John’s University, New York in 1977.
He earned a B.S in Physics in May, 1980, graduating first in his class and with distinction. His undergraduate studies took him only two years and nine months.
Even as he achieved the academic feats, he also broke the university’s sporting records in long jump and triple jump for which he would be later inducted into St John’s University Hall of Fame.
Bart moved further ahead to get his M.S in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research in Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in January, 1982.
He then earned a Ph.D in May, 1983, majoring in Manufacturing Engineering and doing his Dissertation in Computer-Aided Design of Robots.
He capped up his studies with Post-Doctoral Certificate Courses at the esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1985, undertaking courses in Robot Manipulators, Computer Vision, and Automated Manufacturing.
It is noteworthy that Bart established his Foundation in 1984 to sponsor the education of people in his hometown and developing the community at large.
He did fundamental duty as Director, Automation and Robotics Laboratory, University of Massachusetts at Amherst from 1984 to 1997.
He was Professor of Robotics and Computer-integrated Manufacturing at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, UMass, Amherst from 1983 to August 31, 1997.
Following the call from the Federal Government of Nigeria, he served as the Minister of Science and Technology where he did the yeoman’s job of re-establishing the Ministry in 1993. The arduous task that took barely three months drained him onto the sickbed!
Bart was appointed the ALCOA Foundation Professor in Manufacturing Engineering in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh from 1996 to 2003. He upped the ante as the William Kepler Whiteford Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh from July 2002 to September 2007.
He was the Founder and Director, United States National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research e-Design Centre for IT Enabled Design and Realization System for Mechanically Engineered Products and Systems from June 2003 to August 2007.
On the home front in Nigeria, he was elected the Pioneer President of the Independent Power Providers Association of Nigeria from 2007 to 2010.
President Goodluck Jonathan appointed him the Special Adviser to the President on Power and Chairman, Presidential Task Force on Power from June 2010 to July 2011.
As Honourable Minister of Power, Federal Republic of Nigeria, from July 2011 to August 28, 2012, he spearheaded the reform of the Nigerian power sector under the leadership of President Jonathan.
Prof Bart Nnaji broke the power jinx in Nigeria by setting up Geometric Power Limited, Nigeria’s first indigenous private power company, after 20 years of dogged struggle, resilience and uncommon integrity.
A fervent believer in Nigeria and her future, he has refused to bow the knee to all shapes of intrigue and sabotage in his pursuit of the common good.
He serves as the Chairman of the Advisory Board of Nigeria Prize for Science, the $100,000-worth award aimed at stimulating the advancement of science and technology to resolve issues germane to Nigeria’s development.
A restless innovator, he has launched the N10 million Bart Nnaji Engineering Innovation Competition aimed at bringing palm wine tapping into the modern era. It entails engineering the future by calling on “bold thinkers, builders, and innovators to design a safer, smarter way to harvest palm wine without climbing trees.”
The Challenge runs thus: “Palm wine is a highly nutritious and commercially valuable product, both locally and internationally. Yet the traditional method of harvesting it depends on manual climbing that is dangerous, exhausting, and increasingly unsustainable. With the aging population of skilled tappers phasing out, the industry faces a serious continuity challenge. Younger generations are understandably hesitant to adopt a process defined by physical risk. This competition invites Nigeria’s brightest engineering minds to introduce a practical intervention through technology and design.”
The jewel in the Prof Bart Nnaji crown is without any question whatsoever his beloved wife, Agatha, aka OsoDi, whom he fondly dubbed “The Boss”.
Prof Bart Nnaji deserves a book – sorry, books and buntings and badges – for being a reason to believe.