Q: Please tell us about yourself
Okay, my name is Patrick Okedinachi Utomi. I was born in Kaduna. I've had this good fortune of a Pan-Nigerian upbringing or growing up. I was born in Kaduna, I was baptized in Jos. I lived as an infant in Maiduguri. I started school in Kano in 1960.
I finished primary school in Gusau, which is in today's Zamfara State. I started secondary school in Onitsha, Christ the King's College in Onitsha, and then the civil war started, and I moved to Loyola College in Ibadan, that is when I had the privilege of meeting Engineer Maduka for the first time. As a Form 2 student in Loyola College, one of his nephews, Joseph Egwele, was my classmate, and we had other Madukas who were in Loyola.

I went on to the University of Nigeria in Nsukka and after that, I went off to grad school in America. What had happened was that I, having gone off to grad school, I had connected very early as a youth copper, a 21-year-old youth corper.
I had the privilege of national service with New Breed Magazine, which back in those days was the defining magazine group in Nigeria, and so, pretty early, I got my name some recognition as a youth copper, even though I had been active as a student politician at the University of Nigeria, and one of the things, interestingly, that brought me some national notoriety or fame, whichever you like, as that youth corper, in some way related to broadcasting.

In 1977, the NTA, or the television stations around the country, were being merged, taken over by the federal government, the regional stations. Working as a youth copper, a very aggressive young reporter, I wrote some deep research reports and stuff like that.
The amalgamation of sub-national television and radio stations into a national network.
It became NTA and FRCN, and it was taking place under General Olusegun Obasanjo’s,
watch. People from some parts of the country, very powerful like the North, were very reluctant to let Radio Kaduna be let go and be incorporated into the federal network. So, Chris Okolie, the publisher, asked me to investigate what was going on. I wrote a report that was the cover story of Newbreed Magazine, I think it was December 1977.
The report was titled, The Radio Kaduna Controversy. That actually forced the cabinet to shuffle.

The then federal commissioners, they were called for information, the federal minister, Chief Ayo Olugunlade, was sacrificed. He had to be dropped from the cabinet as a result of the fallout from my investigations. Shortly after that, I left NYSC for graduate studies in the U.S. I came home after my PhD in 1982, and who was Director General of NTA, First ever Director General, Engineer Vincent Maduka. While I was in the U.S., I was writing newspaper, op-ed pieces in Nigerian newspapers.
So shortly after I came back, I ran into Engineer Maduka at some public event that I had gone to, and he called me, Patrick. Patrick! You are back. I said, yes, sir.
He said, I read some of the clever things you are writing. I said, thank you, sir. You must come and see me. All right, I will do that, sir.

So I show up at NTA. He chatted with me for a while, and then presses the intercom. He says, Mohammed, please come. Mohammed Ibrahim, I think, was Director of News. Mohammed, this is Dr. Utomi, put him on television. I think it was the next day. So I was on the network news analyzing the project. Yeah, it talked about depths of horizontal and vertical equity, the challenge of taxation in Nigeria. . The vice president
was sitting with friends, watching including one of his SA’s Mrs. Mobola Olajide who had worked at NTA. It was her job to fetch me and that's how I became a government official because after I met him he asked that I write him some position papers as the vice president and then the following week, he Odenigwe as a special advisor to the president at the time on political affairs.

Q: What are your biggest strengths and what are your biggest weaknesses
Well you know, strengths are usually best for others to assess but I do think I know a few things that I try to do well. Weaknesses are, well, I can write a book of weaknesses that I have, as I have an army of them. I believe that I like to put myself to working hard
and thinking clearly. Work ethic has grown on me. Apparently, it comes with practice.
When I was in grad school, in four years, I worked through two master's degrees and a PhD, in four years. One of my professors, who actually supervised my dissertation, once described me as a pathological workaholic and a compulsive overachiever. He didn't do it in praise. He was complaining to a friend of mine. He's an old friend of mine called Folu Ogundimu. He's a professor at Michigan State today. He said, Folu, take him to a nightclub. Let him live like a human being. This guy is a pathological workaholic, a compulsive overachiever.

Weakness, I overstretch because I keep believing that, I don't say no as quickly as I should. So I keep taking on more than I should. So that's a major weakness.
For strength, I believe that purpose is about impact, not about material expansion. By that I mean that too many people who are motivated in our culture, in our present circumstance in our country by how much, I think more in terms of immortality. I have had the good fortune of, you know, the spirit of contentment. So that it wouldn't matter to me if my neighbor had 10 Mercedes Benz's, and I had one Corolla. As long as I can get to where I'm going, I really couldn't worry about comparing. I think it's a major strength. That's enormously helpful to my career. I do believe very much in delayed gratification. In a society that is significantly instant gratification oriented, I think it's a very important thing.
Q: What is your typical day like now
You mean in retirement? it's a beautiful time. Yeah, it is a game of retirement or not retirement. I cannot work any less today than I worked 30 years ago but it is very predictably changing a little bit. I actually now living in Washington, I came in last week I'm leaving tonight. I was appointed a fellow and policy scholar in Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington so at least for the next one and a half years or so my schedule will be altered by my new place of domicile. How do I function in Washington compared to how I function here? In many ways, fairly similar. This morning I was up early and I was at morning mass, a routine I've had for a good 40 years or so. I start every morning with mass. I had a drink with the American Consul General yesterday he asked about how I was managing my mass routine in the U.S. And I told him that we human beings are creatures of habit.

In 1996, I was a scholar-in-residence at an American University in Washington, and I lived around the waterfront. It was by the Department of Housing and Urban Development at Farmer on 4th Street, and I was privileged to live not far from the church, the St. Dominic's, which is a regional center for the Dominicans. Having gotten used to the style from back then, on this new round, a good nearly 40 years,
30 years later, sorry. I live in Arlington, Virginia, but I commute all the way to go to Mass. it's easy for me in the sense that I can take a train from Roslyn, the metro, to come straight to La Font Plaza, which is just by St. Dominic's, and then the Woodrow Wilson Center is only two stops away. I can travel all the way, It's not like a huge travel, 15, 20 minutes ride. Go to St. Dominic's, ride back two places, and I'm in the Wilson Center.
So my typical day starts with Mass. Then, these days, different from when I lived around, when I lived around here, like I did today, I would come straight from Mass to the office. People will always be shocked that I was on my desk at 8 a.m. every day. It wasn't so much diligence as convenience you just come straight from Mass to the office. My day will run typically till about 5.30 – 6pm. So by 6 latest, I would head home.

In former times, there was a great myth of, you know, I mean, for whatever reason, through the course of my career, media cameras seemed to like me. So I would be on the front cover of three or four daily newspaper, so there was the myth of somebody who does not sleep, who is all the way, you know, intensely. It was a big myth in many ways because from very early, I was determined, well, let's say I got the privilege to learn early in life that family was very important. So I decided that the night was not my place. I've never been a night person, like going out at night. I'm not a club type. I don't go to clubs. It was a joke in the golf section in the Ikoyi club 20-something years ago that was the biggest donor to the section. The joke was that I paid and never showed up.

When I was active in industry, I would get like five, six invitations for one evening, and I devised a method where I would actually show up at four or five events in one evening
and spend no more than 10 minutes at any of them and be home before 8 o'clock. And the next day in the newspapers, I would be seen at four different places. So the typical person would be like, did this man sleep at all? Later on, when my wife's friends began to discover that I spent more time at home than their own husbands, who were not seen, they were wondering. But it was deliberate. I worked at it. So my day was fairly predictable. It would start with mass very early in the morning, I would close from the office, and if there were social events, I would round up two, three, four, five events in one hour. Different locations. Usually it would be V.I, Ikoyi, and I would be home. This is how I functioned for years. Of course, when I get home after days of family time, food, dinner, whatever, I would return to my study and work at home. I would typically then work till about midnight and then retire after midnight. I would be up and running at five again. So the work does not stop.

Q: How was your early life growing up, your days as a teenager
You know teenage years can be broken into different parts. In those days boarding school was very important but it was slightly different from immediate post-secondary. My teenage years were in Ibadan, in Loyola College, I was a boarding student, the basic discipline of a catholic school, I was quite a rascal. You know in primary school there was a standard when your results come, there is the teacher's comments and I thought the teachers used to have a meeting to decide what they said because
from one teacher to the other said almost the same thing brilliant but troublesome. That rascality followed me into secondary school. In Loyola, I was probably the youngest in my class, even Joe who was quite young was I think older than myself Joe Igwele,
but I was the one who fought all the bullies, the smallest guy was fighting bullies, not
for bullying him, but for bullying people bigger than him. So it was a kind of strange thing.

Of course, nobody tried to bully me because I was that much trouble. So nobody wanted my trouble. We had a nice network of old Midwest boys in Loyola during those civil war years, Joe Keshie, Edmond Mokai, and a number of them, and so we related like brothers. They looked after the younger ones. I had first cousins who were in STC, St. Teresa's in Ibadan there, so activities were kind of this college of Midwest kids.
On holidays, like I mentioned, we typically visited the Madukas, and Mrs. Maduka had this comment so many times, she now has to say it before I say it. I first ate frejon in my life in the Maduka house.

Then left high school, I finished high school at 15, so that was a gap year so to speak at that time there was a trend. Young people were excited about the new track of aviation Nigeria, it had just come out of the West Africa Airways Corporation. They were in need of pilots and all of that pilots. Being a pilot was a glamorized thing, so I wanted to be a pilot, a couple of my friends all headed in that direction. In fact to make matters worse one of the neighborhood kids where I grew up with Lagos here in Surulere, finished school cert in December, his mother was a successful businesswoman by February,
he was on his way to Florida to the pilot training in bonsai art aviation training college. He didn't even wait for the result to come out because certificate was not a critical factor in the train of pilots in those days at least outside Nigeria. It was a skill rather than an academic thing.
10 months later he was back in the country, a commercial pilot and because he has “change” as we like to say, he brought a fancy sports car home with him and you can imagine that his evening was coming to get me, drive around through Surulere in his fancy American Chevrolet Camaro. So we became quite well known taunting young girls
in those days, I don't know if it still happens but people used to wave down rides for lifts, young ladies wave us down, we don't normally stop, we wait to see one that has waved down another car then we'll park in front of the car, the young lady will look at the Toyota and say to the man I think I’ve seen my uncle and then come to us and we'll say where are you going? They’ll say “we are going to ikeja” we would now say, sorry, we are not going that way. That was a kind of prank that we played as teenagers. Then my father played a trick on m, I was talking about going to flying school like my friend Olumide and he said fine. In fact he took me to go and see the director of Nigeria Airways to discuss my career. He was like, you know the best friends in life are the friends you make in the university campus so why don't you go to university spend a year or two and then you can go to flying school so I thought why not.

Those days, there were only five universities in Nigeria and Benin came shortly after during that period, that time it was still called Midwest Institute of Technology. I took the entrance exam to University of Nigeria, passed and because I didn't give any thought to what subject because all I wanted to do was go and have fun for two years, and leave for flying school. Somehow I ended up in the mass communication department and a life-changing thing happened while I was there. I was struck by selfishness of people, the university could not afford to open department libraries just after the Civil War. There were books being donated from all over the world with few libraries but they were shut because the university couldn't pay librarians and stuff for departments. Everybody went to the main library to use so the head of department offered the students
opportunity to run the library by themselves if they could organize themselves. Students would not volunteer, so one day just to shame them I went to the head of the department and said if they would not volunteer, I'm ready to man the library and the department head, more stunned than anything else just opened his drawer and gave me the key of the library and the only way anybody could use the library was if I was there.
That drew a new sense of responsibility so that if I wasn't in class and I wasn't eating or sleeping, I would make sure I was at library having an open library and nothing else to do just reading the books in the library that's how the trajectory of my life changed I forgot about flying school and went to grad school, of course disciplines also changed, then my core interests moved to political science, economics and management.

Q: What was your first job
A: Well reporter at New Breed as a youth corper was my real first job. It would seem like I did it so well that the publisher one day really appointed me editor over people who left University the year I was born
Q: What was it like getting your first salary pay cheque
A: I've never thought about that it but seemed peculiar perhaps because as
a student that was also quite entrepreneurial, I was already making money as an undergraduate doing a couple of things so I didn't pay much attention to a first paycheck. I have no recollection of it.

Q: Did you have a mentor in your early days at work
A: Well, I had mentors. Again, it would be hard to tell where work was and when I started work, you know, how I worked in the sense that, I broke straight into public life. There’s a statement that I'm very careful how I make,I tried to make it to encourage young people, but if you make it, don't contextualize it, it might seem like pride. I never applied for a job in my life and I like to tell young people all the jobs I've done applied for me. I never applied for a job, honestly, seriously. In this sense, I came back from grad school, first thing I did was start my business. I was straight from grad school to business. That was context. I'll give you an example. When I first came back, there were some professors at the University of Lagos who had spent their sabbatical in the U.S.
where I was in grad school and they were interested in attracting me to their department. Because I was discipline randy, I mean, economics, political science,
public administration, business administration, So, Professor Adele Jinadu and Anifowoshe from political science were the first to say to me, you must come to the Department of Political Science. I said, okay. What I had in mind was to start a business in the consulting area, but they suggested to me I should come to the Department of Political Science. I said, okay.

Then, Onuora Nwuneli, who was head of mass communication at the time, at UNILAG, heard that I was going to apply for political science. He protested that I was already internationally published in media studies because I had written media and society research papers which were published in European academic journals as a graduate student. He said I should come to mass communication. As we were trying to determine that business, while they were debating which department I should go to at UNILAG,
my encounter with the vice president took place, and I was in public life. When the coup then took place, I tried to return to organize the business as I started, then I was headhunted by Volkswagen to come in. I ended up spending a few years at Volkswagen.

Then, I decided to return to academia with the founding of the Lagos Business School. I was one of those who started it out.
In terms of mentoring on the job, I had two super mentors. Shortly after I returned from the U.S., I got to be friendly with two remarkable gentlemen. Dr. Pius Okigbo, first economic advisor to the Prime Minister of Nigeria, and Aje Ukpaba Nsika, who used to teach at the University of Ibadan, then became administrator of East Central State.
I like to say that I got an even better education from those two relationships than I got from all the years in graduate school, because I would visit two times a week or something, ask Asika a question about something that happened somewhere in the world and he would go back all the way to Cicero and come and finish up with Nnamdi Azikiwe. Every question was a three-hour lecture. So I thoroughly enjoyed being mentored by those men, yes.
Q: How do you manage stress
A: Actually, I should ask my colleagues at the Lagos Business School. The standing joke in those days was, you will never catch Pat, not smiling. I just know that I want to accomplish a lot, but I was not fixated with, I must be this, I have to be that. I just figured that if I did my work well, I would get the results I was looking for. Titles were not important to me. Power was not very important to me, and so stress was less problematic.
I tell you, a true story. In 2007, I was running for president of Nigeria. We were campaigning around the country, and my friend, Professor Femi Bamiro, was then vice chancellor at the University of Ibadan. So he had sort of sureptitiously arranged for me to come and campaign on campus. Of course, he had to pretend that it had nothing to do with it. So I went to Ibadan and campaigned in the U.I. I gave a couple of these things. I went to Dugbe In the market, one woman looked at me and said, are you sure you are running for president of Nigeria? Those running for local government have not come to see us. And you have come to see us. Are you saying you are running for the whole president? I said, yes. I explained a few things to her, she opened wrapper, where they had the store money and she gave me N500. I kept it for a long time. I don't know when I finally lost it.

I returned to Lagos, amongst those in my travel team, a gentleman called Tony Uranta. I dropped off Tony Uranta at 2 a.m. I got a phone call, Tony Uranta has had a stroke. He was rushed to the hospital. Yeah, I know there's pressure. So, we rushed to the hospital, and the director of the cardiac center in.V.I. said, look, all these gentlemen running all over the place, everybody line up, start taking your blood pressure because that's how these things happen.
They took everybody's blood pressure. They came back and looked at me. The blood pressure is like that of a baby. I said, well, thank God. I don't stress too much. I just give God gratitude.

Q: What are your hobbies
A: When we were in Loyola, the competition was how many books you read a week. James Halle Chase, Agatha Christie. So a major hobby from childhood was reading.
Played soccer a little bit. I was a goalkeeper in Loyola. We had a field we called Sahara because there was no grass. So I was one of the champion goalkeepers in Sahara, but I didn't have a heavy sport in life after school. I enjoyed music quite a bit. Actually, I was director of socials of the student union at Nsukka. I like to organize campus life stuff.
In later years, I was not much of a person of hobbies. I was not a nightclub person.
Q: What is your ideal vacation
A:
Q: Your favorite place in the world outside Nigeria
A: It's going to be difficult for someone like me who has had the privilege of being on all continents of the world and in at least 184 countries. I've been in serene places.
I've been in all kinds of fascinating places. It will be difficult to say this is my favorite.
I mean, there are these fun places from Mauritius. Mauritius to Maldives to Hawaii.
I've been in the last three months, I've been in Taiwan, Indonesia, Turkey.
So different places hold different fascinations. I have great difficulty saying this is my favorite place. I'm awed by Rome and the history, a great revelation for me revelation maybe because of western propaganda for a long time I didn't go to Russia until about four or five years ago for the first time in my life and I had I just my imagination of Russia with this something like in the thick of autumn dreary kind of place. To my surprise Moscow was prettier than Washington. I was shocked. So that was a revelation for me. Climbing the great wall of China was a magical thing you know, I don’t have a favorite place.
Q: How did you meet your Spouse
A: That's a legendary story. It’s been published so many times I’m becoming embarrassed. Well back to the same days when I first just came from the U.S.A, a certain childhood friend seemed to be running a relay with me. We were in primary school together in Gusau, far away Gusau. I show up in CKC, Onitsha, he was there. So we're in primary school together and secondary school together. And then I show up at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, and he was there again, my friend. Well, he showed up and I was there because I got there before him. Came back from the U.S, found he was living three doors away from my family house in Surulere, Lagos. And he thought I was too serious.

When I came back from the US, I was still working through the night and day, and so he would routinely come and ask me, say, my friend, enough of this, let's just go somewhere and air the brain a bit. Let's drive around. So we'll end up in some place in Itire Road, then he would say,why don't we just branch into LUTH there? He was dating a young lady who was a final year student there. When he comes to get me, I'm wearing my jeans, bathroom slippers, and combed hair, and I'm going to buy suya.
Then he then comes up with this, let's branch into LUTH. I’m like I'll wait for you in the car. So looking completely unkempt, I will come out with this guy into his girlfriend's room. They were now very senior. So they had really been to a room in one of those places. Well, long and short is that we married classmates and roommates.
Q: How many children do you have
A: Five of them.
Q: Did you want more
A: I wanted far less. When we started out, my dream, you get all these magazine impressions as a teenager. My dream was to have only one child, and that one child to be a girl. Not typically Nigerian. I had become fascinated by, I think it was Richard Pryor, one of these comedian actors in Hollywood. He bought his daughter a Mercedes Benz sports car on her 21st birthday or 18th birthday or something like that. And I thought, that's what I would like to do in life, just have one daughter you will really spoil. Buy her that kind of car on her 21st birthday. So that shaped my view.

As a young person, I used to express it very frequently. My mother used to panic about it and so her first issue with anybody I dated was, please, don't mind him. Don't mind this thing he's saying. I think between she and my wife, conspiracies went from one daughter to five children. Of course, faith eventually made accepting it easier. So I became more Catholic in my orientation.
Q: Did any of them follow in your footsteps, career wise
A: I don't know what my footsteps would be. The youngest, who is a consultant working for Bain & Co. in Chicago, very typically me. She went to Wharton Business School. And does, look out for the kinds of things I look out for.
So in a sense, yes, she followed my track.
Q: How does that make you feel
A: Nothing at all. Doesn't make me feel anything. As far as I was concerned. The idea is for them to find their track. Do what they enjoy doing.
Q: What experiences have you had in your life that you’d say have shaped you to be the person you are today
A: Near-death experiences, I've had several. I've survived assassination attempts from the government of Nigeria under Abacha, because I led the concerned professionals and all of that, so I survived two assassination attempts. I was on the spot of one of those terrorist bomb blasts in London. I was on the same coach in the Edgeware Road blast on 07-07. So I've been through quite a few of those.
Q: What one thing do wish you could go back in time and do all over again
A: That's a great problem, so I don't know. I always said if I had to rethink it, I would begin life as an engineer, because there’s a discipline that engineering gives to the mind. I began to run away from math, physics classes in high school, and then fixated on being a pilot. Not because I want to practice as an engineer, but I would like engineering to discipline my mind. Then I would take a business degree after the engineering degree and be an entrepreneur. Not that I don't like the fact that I've played in the policy arenas, policy thinker and strategist. It's been fun. I've had a great life doing that passionately, but if I started with an engineering training, I think I'll be even more disciplined.
Q: What are the best qualities you look for in people
A: Integrity. If you don't have integrity, everything is lost.
Q: How is your relationship with God
A: I am a Catholic and I still attend Mass every morning
Q: If you could pick 3 people to have a conversation with either living or dead, who would they be
A: Living or dead? Wow, good to start with dead. How far can I go? Through human history? One would be Niccolo Machiavelli, who's much misunderstood. A great thinking policy man. Another would be Douglas North. Dougie North won the Nobel Prize in economics and did some pioneering work in institutional economics. His work has influenced mine significantly. And of course, my own head of department when I was in grad school, Eleanor Lee Nordstrom, became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics. Yeah, it'd be good to chat with these three people.
Q: What are your 3 greatest achievements thus far
A: Well, the fact that people listen. I can say this. I was at an event last December with a couple of former heads of states of Nigeria. You know, General Obasanjo tends to call me very frequently to ask my view of this or that, but the one that surprised me was General Abdusallam who said to me, when you talk, bear in mind that the whole country listens to you and respects your views. I think that's probably one of the nicest things about being straightforward, consistent. Whether they accept and do what you say or not, they actually are listening to what you say.

Q: Beef or Chicken or Fish
A: I've learned to be more fishy because of its impact on me.
Q: Hot or Cold weather
A: Cold, you can always cover yourself in cold.
Q: Sweet or spicy foods
A: Sweet
Q: Read, Watch TV or Listen to music to relax
A: Read, watch TV. As my eyes are getting tired, reading becomes more strenuous. Maybe TV might be easier.
Q: Iphone or Android
A: Well, I own both. In fact, I have four, three iPhones and one Android.
Q: Native, Formal or Casual clothes
A: You know, 20 years ago, people thought I went to school. I went to bed wearing a suit, but I've not been wearing suits for a couple of years now. So, I've changed completely
Q: Window seat or aisle on a plane
A: Window, definitely. Always window.
Q: Europe, Asia or North America to visit
A: Europe, Asia. I've visited all, quite so frequently. Asia has been the domain of my intellectual research, academic research for many years. North America, I lived in. Each one a whole different fascination. Europe is the one that I've dropped out of. I used to be in Europe several times a year back in the old days, but these days, I don't find anything interesting to do in London. I don't go to Europe, but Asia, yes. North America is my home.

Q: Please can you give us 3 people that we can interviews as well
A: I will send that to you later
Q: Please can you give some advice to the young people coming behind you
A: Yeah, again, delayed gratification. Whatever you do, do it very well. Whatever it is, it is. Don't say everybody's an engineer, everybody's this. Whatever it is, you like doing. Do it so that nobody else does it better than you.