Bart Nnaji, Palm Wine and Nigeria

Olusegun Adeniyi

I moderated a ‘fireside chat’ with former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the 70th birthday ceremony of Professor Bart Nnaji last Friday in Enugu. Nnaji is easily one of Nigeria’s foremost thinkers. But beyond the glitz and glamour at the occasion, the real highlight of his birthday was the competition he had set in motion ahead of the big day. Having noticed that the tribe of palm wine tappers were fast disappearing from his village, Nnaji—who loves the local alcoholic drink derived straight from nature—dared those bold enough to solve a problem that most of us have accepted for generations: How do we get wine out of the palm tree without putting a man’s life in the balance? 

It is one of those almost too ordinary dilemmas until you stop to think about it. Before palm wine reaches a calabash or bottle, somebody has almost certainly gone up a tree that can tower thirty, forty, or even sixty feet tall, with nothing more than a rope, bare feet, and suicidal nerve. It is a vocation that has injured and killed tappers for as long as anyone can remember. And it is also one that is going extinct. But having spent most of his career life in the laboratory, solving big problems, Nnaji has looked at this palm wine conundrum the way an engineer looks at everything: a design failure waiting for a fix. Why should harvesting palm wine still require a man struggling to defy the law of gravity?

In May this year, the ‘Bart Nnaji Innovation Challenge’ asked Nigeria’s engineers and backyard inventors for one thing: “Design a safe way to harvest palm wine without climbing trees. If you have an idea that blends creativity, engineering, practical thinking, and real-world impact, this is your shot.” By the time the winners were announced in Enugu last Friday, the competition had already made its point. Two men (Anthony Mbadiwe and Stephen Awotundun) shared the grand prize of N10 million, while a woman (Favour Ojowundu) received the runner-up award of N2 million. According to the Dean Emeritus, Graduate School of Engineering and Management at the USA Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Dayton, Ohio, Professor Adedeji Badiru, who chaired the committee, there were 393 entries. Meanwhile, it is quite evident that Nnaji, like all modern thinkers, is not just interested in the theory of extracting palm wine without stress, there is a rewarding catch somewhere. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Chaired by President Obasanjo, other notable Nigerians at Nnaji’s birthday celebration included the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, who delivered the keynote speech that highlighted what Nnaji had to go through with the Aba power project and his own intervention, first as First Bank Managing Director and later as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor. Also in attendance were former Anambra State Governor, Mr Peter Obi as well as the Governor of Enugu, Mr Peter Mbah and his Abia counterpart, Dr Alex Otti. My friends, Tonye Cole and C. Don Adunuba were also among hundreds of other distinguished personalities from the business community, politics and the academia, including Dr Okey Ndibe, who reviewed the book, ‘Bart Nnaji: The Challenge of Facing the Future’, authored by Uzor Maxim Uzoatu. And the documentary, put together by Nnaji’s wife, Agatha, (a head turner in her days as Director of Sales for Abuja Sheraton Hotels in the early nineties when I was a young reporter), was simply brilliant. “In the laboratory, everything is logical,” Nnaji said while explaining engineering. “If your mathematics is correct, the machine works.” But Nigeria, as I surmised in my interesting conversation with President Obasanjo at the session, does not work that way! And the trajectory of Nnaji’s company provides an eloquent testimony to that.

In his appreciation remarks, Nnaji alluded to the story of Red Bull as an inspiration for trying to “transform a traditional, high-risk practice” of palm wine tapping “into a safer, smarter, and more scalable enterprise.”  That is not surprising. In her piece, ‘The Electrifying Story Behind Red Bull: A Global Phenomenon Rooted in an Unexpected Past’, freelance writer and content creator, Katie Wilde described how the energy drink came about as “a tale rooted in an entirely different culture, a unique blend of serendipity and marketing genius.”

It all started in 1982 when, during a trip to Thailand, an Austrian businessman, Dietrich Mateschitz, reportedly tried a local drink called ‘Krating Daeng’ after he was told it would revitalise him. A marketing executive for a German toothpaste company at the time, Mateschitz was astonished by the efficacy of the drink. Having seen a huge business potential, Mateschitz approached the proprietor, Chaleo Yoovidhya (son of Chinese immigrants) with the idea of adapting and marketing the drink to a global audience. Two years later, a deal was reached for a repackaged product with each partner holding a 49% stake and the remaining 2% reserved for Chaleo’s son, Chalerm. That’s how Red Bull was born with Mateschitz, deploying his marketing skills—as founding CEO—for what is now a multi-billion-dollar company.

In Nigeria, many talk endlessly about innovation, but increasingly in the language of apps, venture capital and technology hubs. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Those industries have transformed lives and created opportunities. Yet somewhere along the way, we have come to equate innovation almost exclusively with what happens on a screen. The country’s oldest problems remain just as deserving of ingenuity. The man who climbs a palm tree every morning is no less worthy of innovation than the customer waiting for a faster payment app. That perhaps explains why the palm wine tapping challenge feels so consistent with Nnaji’s life’s work.

A world-renowned scientist, Nnaji earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from St John’s University, New York before proceeding to the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University for his Masters and PhD in Engineering. Nnaji then followed up with a Post Doctorate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). That was decades before AI became the defining trend! At the faculty of engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where Nnaji began his teaching career, he founded and became the first Director of the Automation and Robotics Laboratory. At age 36 in 1992, Nnaji became a full Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. In constituting the Interim National Government in 1993, General Ibrahim Babangida appointed Nnaji to man the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. While he took a leave of absence to return home, the moment the late General Sani Abacha seized power after just three months, Nnaji returned to his job in the United States.

At the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he, in 1996, became the ALCOA Foundation Distinguished Professor of Engineering and subsequently, the William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Engineering, Nnaji was the Founding Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for e-Design. In 2000, he founded Geometric Power Limited that would become Nigeria’s first privately-owned power development company. Under President Goodluck Jonathan in 2010, Nnaji served as Special Adviser and Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Power. He became Minister of Power in 2011, but resigned a year later. Among many awards, Nnaji is a Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) winner.

Meanwhile, the palm wine challenge initiated by Nnaji may be small in scale, but it springs from the same instinct that defines his scholarship: Identify a neglected problem, refuse to accept it as inevitable, and then set about solving it. The Aba Integrated Power Project also began with an apparently simple question: How could one industrial city enjoy reliable electricity? Solving that problem demanded years of technical expertise and persistence against bureaucratic resistance. What eventually emerged has transformed the power supply in Aba and reshaped assumptions about what private enterprise could achieve in Nigeria’s electricity sector.

I raise the Aba story deliberately, because it is also a caution. Nnaji’s power project worked, eventually, but took the better part of two decades, three changes of government, and more legal and bureaucratic sabotage than any Nigerian should have to survive. In case Nnaji intends to push the envelope on palm wine, I hope he is spared a repeat of such ordeals. If the three young winners who shared his N12 million prize purse can find a way to bring Nigeria’s palm wine tappers down to solid ground, they will have demonstrated that the country’s greatest breakthroughs may yet come from paying serious attention to the ordinary problems we have lived with for far too long.

On a recent podcast, former Leicester City Football Club striker, Jamie Vardy narrated how his Nigerian teammates, Wilfred Ndidi and Kelechi Iheanacho would get knocks during matches, travel home and return with big tubs of ‘juju cream’ that worked for them. But the so-called ‘juju cream’, according to Ndidi, was the traditional shea butter (locally known as ‘Ori’). Many of us who grew up in the village can attest to the efficacy of ‘Ori’ as a soothing balm. And it’s from a tree (‘Igi Emi’ in Yoruba) that is everywhere in many of our rural communities. I highlight this because Nigeria is blessed with an abundance of natural resources waiting for critical thinkers who can make something of them. After resolving Nnaji an entire city’s power supply challenge, Nnaji is now trying to replicate that success with a rope, a tree, and the men who still climb it.

As a nation, we confront both large and small challenges with a superstitious mindset. We also explain away even the simplest of these challenges as an act of the divine, and above human intervention. And we remain enslaved to irrational traditions: leave the palm wine tappers alone. Drink the wine and pour libation to the gods. Ask no questions! In contrast, what Nnaji teaches is the spirit of enquiry, experimentation, observation and inference to solve common problems. This is the critical distinction that stands out in the technologically advanced societies as opposed to those still trapped in primitive and archaic solutions.

Unfortunately, Nnaji’s experience of more than a quarter century trying to power a city and the hurdles he has had to overcome in the process says a great deal about our country. The lesson: Only the innovations that can make people instantly rich as in Fintech stand a chance of finding patronage and support from the authorities and our banks. That is perhaps also the only place where our religion of instant wealth and the miracle of science find a convergence. But it is not the way we will grow as a society. With the Aba power solution, Nnaji has demonstrated that scientific boldness can only thrive where innovation meets significant demand and economic opportunity. Will Nnaji also do that with palm wine?

I won’t bet against him!

FIFA World Cup and Our Football Shame!

Even before the 2026 World Cup final was played between Argentina and Spain last Sunday, many countries had already started preparing for the next edition in 2030. Germany has appointed the charismatic former Liverpool FC Manager, Jurgen Klopp as the national coach while in France, the iconic Zinedine Zidane is taking over from Didier Deschamps. The Italian Football Federation is also said to have opened discussions with former Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola, generally regarded as the best in the business. What all these demonstrate is the importance most countries attach to international tournaments. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same thing about our football administration—even after missing the last two editions of the World Cup.

What’s most worrying is that we’ve hardly learnt any lesson from our experience. On 13 June 2013, a day after the 2014 World Cup Qualifier in Namibia, the Super Eagles players refused to board their scheduled flight to Brazil for the FIFA Confederations Cup on grounds that the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) offered to pay them $5,000 (as against $10,000) each as bonus for their victory over Kenya, in an earlier World Cup Qualifier and $2,500 (as against $5,000) for the draw against Namibia. With that, the players went on strike in Namibia, insisting they would not travel to Brazil unless the NFF paid each of them $15,000 for the two games. Yet as the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) winner, Nigeria was the continent’s sole representative at the FIFA Confederations tournament. Following the international embarrassment, the presidency intervened, but the players arrived late in Brazil and performed woefully at the tournament.

That ugly episode prompted the then National Sports Commission (NSC) Chairman/Minister, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, to set up a committee to investigate the Bonus Row in Namibia. And he appointed me to chair it. Incidentally, the secretary of my committee, Mallam Shehu Dikko, is now the NSC Chairman/Minister. Other members included Bashorun Akin Osuntokun who never played the game but brought in his experience and wise counsel; Hon. Abdulkadir Nasir whose insight from the perspective of the legislature was very useful; Onochie Anibeze, a consummate sports reporter with vast knowledge of the game; Garba Lawal, a level-headed former International who remains a role model for younger players and Aisha Falode, a respected journalist who has also been involved in sports administration at the national level.

The interactive sessions we held with many stakeholders, including a number of the players themselves, provided an inkling into the challenges of football administration in Nigeria. That such protests over ‘Bonus’ continue to recur, including during preparations for the 2025 AFCON and the April 2026 World Cup qualifiers match against Gabon in Morocco (which ended in defeat), indicate that nothing has changed.

The 2030 FIFA World Cup qualifiers are expected to start in the second half of 2027. If we fail to begin the planning now, then we are already planning for another failure!

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com