Engr. Kenneth Ngozichukwuka Nwanze was born on the 29th of May 1953 and attended Boston University USA for his engineering studies. During his stay at Boston, he was nominated to present a paper at the software engineering summer conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in June 1982, a rare recognition to a person of colour at the time. His paper was on structured programming using ‘go-to less’ statements.  

Engr. Nwanze’s professional career spans through the private and public sectors. In 1978, he gained employment into NNPC as an Electronics Instrument Engineer. As a very dedicated and resourceful officer he rose to the position of General Manager, Information Systems at the Corporate Headquarters. Before his retirement he doubled as the Executive Director Hyson and Vice President Calson Bermuda both Joint Venture Entities of NNPC.

As the Head of Information Technology he spearheaded the design of the Data Centre at the Abuja Towers and the Lagos office based on the Gigabit Ethernet technology. These designs were endorsed by Microsoft Regional Office in Ivory Coast and was the basis for the preparation of tender documents.   Engr Nwanze is a pioneer process control systems engineer in Nigeria.

He has made meaningful engineering contributions to the design and development of virtually all Distributed Control Systems in NNPC Refineries, Petrochemicals and Gas companies. In particular he was the Lead control systems engineer for the Fourth Refinery in Port Harcourt.  We must recount his contributions to nation’s development when in 1999 he was appointed by the Minister of Science and Technology as the National Chairman of Y2K for the energy sector. In this capacity he supervised all Y2K remediation activities for not just NNPC but the entire gamut of Oil and Gas sector, Power Utility companies as well as Water Corporations across the country. Again it is on record that under his transparent leadership the nation came out of the millennium bug pandemic unscathed. Several millions of dollars were saved both for NNPC and the nation in that success story.

He has trained, developed and mentored several Nigerian and foreign engineers who today are experts in their own right. Engr. Nwanze served in the COREN visitation panel for the accreditation of Nigerian universities since 1998. He was an active member of the National Geospatial Data Infrastructure, among other various national assignments. He left an unparalleled legacy in the field of control systems engineering.   He has received several distinguished Awards to his honour and has copious publications to his credit.  

Engr. Nwanze has attended several management and leadership development programmes both at home and abroad including Harvard Business School, London Business School and Lagos Business School to mention but a few.   He is married to Mrs. Olubunmi Nwanze, a onetime professional banker and now a partner with a foremost telecommunications network provider. They are blessed with children.