Dr. Osita Aniemeka is a social entrepreneur bringing all of his skills to bear on the social and economic development of West Africa. Osita Aniemeka is Fulltime Faculty (Communication) and Director, Center for Learning at the IBB University, Lapai-NIGERIA. With a PhD in Communication and Entrepreneurial Leadership, Osita has extensive backgrounds in Education, Community Development, Communication and Entrepreneurial Governance. Working with known global social innovators, Osita has followed the shift of fledgling dreams into transformed enterprises. Today he’s one of the few African members of the Social Enterprise Association (United States) and his Center, CLC is the African Liaison for the Foundation for African Arts & Letters, New York aka the Entrepreneurs’ Academy. He’s member of the renowned Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership and a member of the IBBU Senate. Currently on Leave-of-Absence from IBB University, Osita works for the United States Agency for International Development | Nigeria Expanded Trade and Transport (USAID | NEXTT) Project.
At the USAID | NEXTT Project, Osita’s job is facilitating development of the Lagos-Kano-Jibiya (LAKAJI) Corridor to serve as a magnet for investment in Nigeria’s agricultural sector. The corridor, in fact, represents a mega-opportunity for investors, linking the largest consumer market in West Africa (Lagos) with some of the highest potential agricultural zones in the region. As Manager of the LAKAJI Corridor Development, he leads a major component of the USAID Project, which involves:
The LAKAJI Agricultural Growth Corridor Assessment to map out the existing opportunities for improved infrastructure and services for agriculture;
The production of LAKAJI Corridor’s comprehensive fact files on agribusiness investments that provide the impetus for private investors, public agencies and donor-funded programs, to maximize the potential of the Corridor;
The LAKAJI Corridor Transport and Logistics Baseline Assessment to quantify the time and cost of trading goods and the logistical inefficiencies along the LAKAJI Corridor;
Working with the Corridor Management Group on the Validation Workshop that presented the findings of the Transport and Logistics Assessment to the private sector, the public sector and development partners and to get their feedback;
The first ever LAKAJI Agricultural Growth Corridor Investment Summit that presented the LAKAJI Corridor Investment fact files to a global audience; Coordination of a platform for private sector advocacy on the LAKAJI Corridor
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| Osita Aniemeka |
As fulltime faculty in the Department of Mass Communication, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University (IBBU), Lapai, Niger State, Nigeria, Osita teaches broadcasting – advanced radio and television – and digital journalism as well as overseeing internships and supervising degree projects. He is an international pedigree and a good communicator, and brings his diplomatic and consulting skills to mediate constant classroom conflicts – the known blight of modern teaching. He sees the remit of his career in Broadcast/Digital Journalism teaching in today’s academia covering four main functions—teaching, supervision, research, and entrepreneurial behavior. He has deep knowledge and broad experience and expertise in all four aspects of the job.
Osita is the pioneer Director of the Center for Learning Communities (CLC), having single-handedly established the center for moving the academic community beyond the classroom and the campus, thus broadening university learning experience to a global environment. The IBBU-CLC is the first African center initiative to address an increasingly interconnected world, by a state university creating learning climes and curricula that meet the demands of globalization in order to prepare students to learn differently to subsist in the global society. The Center is today, engaging students in first year experience/retention programs; in mentoring, in paying it forward; in life ethics and daily life routines. Also, he develops and facilitates seminars for the University Consultancy Services in myriads of communication, leadership and governance fields.
Previous to becoming a Fulltime Faculty and Director of IBBU-CLC, he was from 2002, Founder and Director of the Foundation for African Arts & Letters (FAAL), New York. Managing the overarching network of African Diaspora from New York, his job involved pooling knowledge, supporting Africans to learn from one another, and harvesting the power of collectivity for spurring development on the continent. Under his leadership, FAAL continually renewed research initiatives and provided the opportunity for increased knowledge about the countries of Africa (particularly West Africa). He bolstered good communication and cooperation among the pockets of Nigerians, Ghanaians, and a host of other ECOWAS nations in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut using his communication skills to create research and scholarships on Africa.
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| Dr. Animeka |
Osita worked for the International Center for Development Affairs (ICDA) and the Development Gateway Foundation (World Bank) to set up the Nigeria Development Gateway Collaborative whose aim was to promote ICT use in enabling sustainable development of Nigerian communities. The Collaborative stimulated the sharing and exchange of information and knowledge, and at the same time working toward national development goals for a knowledge-based society. The Nigeria Development Gateway was part of the global Country Gateway Network comprising almost 60 (sixty) countries around the world.
In 2000, he was asked by Tony Elumelu, the then Managing Director of Standard Trust Bank (now UBA-PLC) to set up and integrate a sub-corporate structure to solve to bolster the new generation bank’s global image. At STB, he turned a one-man unit into a six-department division using his years of experience, astute knowledge of public relations and position as Group Head, Corporate Communications and Community Relations to recruit, create and manage a dedicated team and employed the team to build new reputation for the bank providing the qualifier for the financial institution to smoothly metamorphose into the huge African global bank that it is today.
Between 1998 and 2000, he was accepted by the Communication and Language Arts Department of the University of Ibadan for the MPhil/PhD in Communication and also became a Ford Foundation Fellow as a Scholar-in-Residence at the North Dakota State University (NDSU) Fargo, North Dakota and while in Fargo he was invited to join the NGO Working Group on the World Bank – a network of global NGOs that followed the work of the World Bank in developing countries.
From 1996 to 1998 he was privileged to work for the Africa Communication Network of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an experience that was so riveting that it changed his life forever. At WWF, he worked with the quintessential Sandra Obiago and they pooled together communities from the plethora of environmental hotspots in Nigeria, taught them how to tell their stories, turned them into radio producers and brought them to national and state radio platforms through deft negotiations with Nigerian radio stations. To achieve that feat, he was producer, media coordinator, desk-top publisher, trainer, and community relations liaison – all in one and it was most perceptive. Working with the African Radio Drama Association (ARDA), outputs from the WWF National Radio Project include the nationally-aired broadcasts, What’s Going On – a magazine program and Bugga Town – a drama series both on the environment.
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| National Youth Service Corps |
In early 1990’s, he resigned from his broadcasting work at the State Broadcasting in Benin-City to become editor and later publisher of two separate development journals – Passions Magazine and Affairs Magazine. In both experiences, he used popular media to bring the nascent and grueling health and environmental issues to the fore. While publishing, he delved into college teaching as Adjunct Professor at the University of Lagos in the Department of Mass Communication applying his hands-on experience working for more than a decade in broadcasting and a newly earned graduate degree in electronic media to teach Radio/Television News Writing and Production.
After his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme in 1983, he joined the Bendel Broadcasting Service, Benin City as an Assistant Producer. His talent in broadcasting became obvious very early in his career that in just a few years of joining the service, he went from a producer to a program coordinator and later, station coordinator – manning the new arm of the state radio. His sterling and creative output at the Bendel Broadcasting Service were brilliantly captured and rewarded severally.
Besides, he earned Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Communication and Entrepreneurial Leadership (Dissertation: Social Media and Entrepreneurship Education: Pedagogical Implications of Computer Mediated Communication in Higher Learning in Africa). He received my Master’s degree in Mass Communication (Project: Broadcasting and Family Planning) from the University of Nigeria and Bachelor’s in Education and Community Broadcasting (Project: Radio and Social Mobilization) also from the University of Nigeria. Postdoctoral focus is in Entrepreneurial Journalism.
Osita is a good relationship manager, and workplace leader with the capability to think strategically and prime people aright. He has a knack for planning and organizing with resilience and flexibility. He thrives in open, transparent, and merit-based process, the very approach that has defined and propelled his careers all the years.
Osita is dynamic and creative and epitomizes the kind of strong leadership, creativity and innovation needed in today’s burgeoning work environment. His impeccable credentials, including depth and breadth of knowledge of broad fields of endeavor prepare him for his next venture: oil spill cleanup and poverty alleviation in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria – Phoenix Project that envisions creating enterprise recovery and empowerment zones in the entire Niger Delta.
Osita is blessed with four sons, two daughters, one daughter-in-law and four grandchildren.
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