The overarching consensus amongst his compatriots is that Emeka Ozumba is unassuming but quietly effective. Cool, calm, calculated and compassionate, the personable go-getter clocks 60 years of age on 11th December 2023.
A fresh prince of the diamond jubilee, Ozumba stands tall with well over two decades of illustrious experience in public affairs, reputation management, crisis communication, media and stakeholder relations.
Ozumba’s career kicked off as the Public Relations Officer of Nigerian Prisons Service Training School, Enugu from 1990, and he put in a worthy shift until 1995. He thereafter joined The Corporate and Financial Communications (now known as C&F Porter Novelli) as the South-East zonal consultant for the Petroleum Trust Fund’s Community Education and Awareness programme between 1997 and 1999, where he deployed stakeholder and community relations skills to achieve remarkable goals.
He later distinguished himself as the Deputy Chief Press Secretary to the Governor of Anambra State. Along his steady years of service in the public and private sector, Ozumba ticks portfolios as Managing Consultant at Ozion Limited, and Practice Leader, Public Affairs, at C&F Porter Novelli, Nigeria’s leading business advisory consultants.
In the Public Relations domain, his experience cuts across multiform sectors including public sector agencies such as the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), and private sector organs with specialty in telecoms, finance, health, aviation, and technology. He has acquitted himself creditably on events with active project execution in the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja), and major cities like Lagos, Kano and Port Harcourt etc.
It commands reiteration that Ozumba has hands-on experience in crisis communications, political communications, media relations, community and stakeholder relations, as well as project monitoring and advocacy services.
It has been his forte to bring these skills to bear in the management of communications for Anambra State Government as Deputy Chief Press Secretary to the Governor from 2019 to March 2022, and Senior Special Assistant (SSA) from 2015 to 2018. He scored a bullseye in the BPE, and in blue-chip organisations such as Pfizer, Emirates, Actis, Stanbic/IBTC Bank, MTN and Etisalat (now 9mobile).
Ozumba coordinated the Senatorial Campaign for Kpakpando Organisation in Anambra State in 2010, having earlier delivered the advocacy campaign for Polio Eradication in select states in Nigeria for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2009.
He excelled as the Team Coordinator, C&F Porter Novelli Reputation Management for the Office of the Senate President in 2005, and as National Co-coordinating Consultant on Communications of the Awareness Generation and Consensus Building Campaign for the Privatisation Programme of the National Council on Privatisation between 2000 and 2002.
A 1987 graduate of Mass Communication of the Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu, he also holds a Master’s Degree (with PhD in view) from Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam, Anambra State. He had along the line obtained a Post Graduate Diploma (Advertising) from the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) in 1995. He is an alumnus of the esteemed Pan African University, Lagos.
Ozumba is a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, a Registered Practitioner of Advertising, and a member of the Nigerian Institute of Management.
As the amiable Ozumba turns 60, he would not want a loud bash in keeping with his unalterable nature of infectious humility.
Let’s end with his own words: “Ordinarily, save for cutting a cake to share with friends around, I don’t plan any celebration, especially in this time of privation. However, I have advisedly noted that it is a landmark age, and to mark it, decided to embark on what I call: SixtyLives@60 with Friends & Associates. The idea is to implore friends like you to kindly support with whatever appeals to you, by contributing to a charity, any selfless cause of your choice in my name, as a symbolic gesture to mark my 60th birthday. This is why I have chosen to write you as my friend, and one of the 60, whose acts of benevolence, I believe, would convey my prayers of gratitude to God Almighty. I have taken liberty to compile names of some charitable organisations, indigent persons – some who are not sure of food on the table this Christmas. My expectation is that you may choose from the list or decide to touch a life as you wish, bearing in mind that you are doing it on my behalf. Please do avail me your confirmation to enable me acknowledge your gesture in thanksgiving and prayers on that day”.
