Donald Etiebet, a former minister of petroleum and a former governor of Cross River State is 80 years old. He was 80 on Sunday September 15.

To celebrate his landmark age, the Petroleum Club, Africa’s first-of-its-kind policy advocacy group in the hydrocarbon sector, plans to hold a lavish dinner in Lagos, in the coming week to celebrate his life and times.

The reason for this is because Etiebet is one of the founding fathers of the club made up of leaders in the Nigerian oil and gas industry and respected professionals associated with the industry.

The dinner event will be held at the Metropolitan Club, Victoria Island, an exclusive, members-only elite club.

A pioneer in Information and Communication Technology, ICT, a towering figure in business, politics and the petroleum industry, it won’t be out of place to say that Etiebet is an accomplished man. He was Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister from 1993 to 1995, during which the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Towers in Abuja was built and the construction of the Nigeria LNG Limited, NLNG, was relaunched. He also played important roles in the establishment of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF).

As Minister, Etiebet introduced many reforms in the oil industry, including strengthening the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, a regulatory agency. He had the foresight and sound judgement about deep offshore oil production as the new frontier of oil and gas production in the country and thus approved the first ever deep-water offshore oil and gas exploration and production program pioneered by Shell in 1994, the Bonga oil fields on the Atlantic Ocean which is the nation’s most resourceful offshore production platform.

As a pioneer in the ICT business, he set up Obodex which comprises 12 businesses in the ICT, oil and gas and property development. In 1990, he launched the first ever Nigerian brand name in personal computers, known as OBODEX PCs which introduced the first keyboard with the Naira sign.

In recognition of his contributions, President Goodluck Jonathan decorated him with the national honour of Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON).

He is a Fellow of the Nigeria Computer Society (FNCS); Fellow of the Computer Registration Council of Nigeria (FCPNS); Fellow of the Nigerian Mining Geosciences Society (FNMGS); Member of Society of Petroleum Engineers (MSPE); Member of Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (MNAPE); Member of American Association of Petroleum Geologist (MAAPG), among others.

His Etiebet Place in Lagos, built in 1992, stands as a towering testimony to the business sagacity of this octogenarian.

After obtaining a Masters degree in Applied Geophysics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and working in the oil industry in that country and in Shell Petroleum in Holland, young Etiebet returned to Nigeria in September 1971 to start building his businesses. The first was Earth Sciences Limited, established in 1972 as the first Nigerian-owned company in geophysical prospecting and computer data processing services. The company grew rapidly and in 1979, Etiebet founded Data Sciences Nigeria Limited (DSNL) to take over the computer businesses of Earth Sciences. It was the exclusive distributor for the US-based Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the pioneer producer of interactive computers and largest manufacturers of minicomputers in the world. Data Sciences provided computer hardware and software to the oil industry, and later in other areas of the economy.

His company, Obodex was the first to install computer-based communications systems linking oil platforms in Warri and Port Harcourt and homes of the oil executives in the two locations. This was the forerunner of e-mail and Internet connectivity; and for his pioneering roles, he remains a trustee of the Nigeria Internet Group which he helped found.

Etiebet contributed immensely to the establishment of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) that is responsible for the formulation of government’s policies on ICT. His pioneering works also led to the establishment of Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), the regulatory agency for ICT, of which he was a pioneer director.

Etiebet has also been a notable player in Nigerian politics. He was the founder and financier of Nigeria Center Party (NCP), during the transition programme of late General Sani Abacha. He ran for the presidency twice. First on the platform of NCP and later on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party, which he helped found. Unfortunately, he never actualised his presidential ambition. He has since defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. Today he takes things easy after he suffered a serious health challenge.