My wedding day is my memorable day -- Thomas Uduo

EMEKA IBEMERE

He had a humble background while growing up under the tutelage of his father who apparently was a security personnel and this genetic material runs in the family with a passion. And so when he enrolled as a National Drug Law Enforcement Agency operative, it wasn’t because of lack of job in the field he studied in the university, it was sheer family passion for law enforcement jobs.

Thomas Uduo, a staff of NDLEA who recently was honoured in Anaheim, California, United States, for winning the 2015 Young Professionals Seminar Experience is a toast of NDLEA staffs. Uduo is a Certified Protection Professional (CPP) member.

According to this respected officer, “A day in my life was that memorable day the pastor pronounced me a married man. I told myself, so I’m now husband to a wife. I began to look at myself as a man with responsibilities, thinking oh, I can no longer eat alone, somebody else will be sick and it becomes my problem to take the person to the hospital; and I said okay, this is how maturity is,” he added.

 “And my father told me that look, you are now a man and that there are certain decision you will take without me advising you. So, those things I began to learn; so that wedding day was my memorable day in my life because it opened the door for my growth,” he said.

Uduo came from an average family and of course to his family education was something that his parents cherished.  From his primary school, he went to Saint Cosmas School, which was owned by the Catholic Church and was virtually consistent in education, so it was something he loves so much. “In fact, as I talk to you now I have been offered admission for my PhD in the University of Jos, and may be by next three years when we meet again, it will be on another level,” he explained.

Why he decided to enrol in law enforcement job, he explained that it was out of passion rather than lack of job in lucrative sectors.

 “No, no, it’s not like that I have the passion for law enforcement work. In fact even my children, they will tell you they will be an officer like their father and from my family history as well, we tend to love law enforcement jobs. It’s never a case of lack of job in oil companies or banks because as I talk to you now, I go into consultations and people call me seeking for one security advice or the other and I keep on advising them.

“I can even go for teaching, so it wasn’t as if it’s because of lack of job that pushed me into security job; it was for the passion for the job and as I said earlier, it also helps me to develop my gift and skill in the area of security different from other organisations,” he stated.

He studied Business Administration at the University of Derby for his first degree with upper division one and thereafter he went further for an MBA in Management and MSc in Security and Risk Management before he was certified as Certified Protection Professional (CPP), from AISS International -- a world body for security management with 38,000 members all over the world and it happens that recently he was one of the recipients of the Young Professional Award, 2015. And he was invited to Anaheim in California for the award.

According to him, “NDLEA is a fantastic organisation and that is why he was able to win the award. Without the level of high professionalism here and what we are doing as a law enforcement agency because the background of the award came through law enforcement down to security and without it, it won’t have been easy.”

Uduo stated that NDLEA is an organisation that developed his skills and built him for the society. For that reason, he is grateful to the agency for what he is today. “So I thank the organisation for the skills that I have acquired over the years from the organisation.”

For challenges facing him in his task as a security expert, the Obudu, Cross River State man, said his trouble with Nigeria is lack of planning by policy makers and political leaders.

 “Not actually, there are no challenges as such but the problem that I have is our Nigerian system of doing things. As a professional security officer, I want to use this opportunity to tell you a bit of our situation in Nigeria, in terms of security. Take for instance the Boko Haram case, now all over the world; you discover that people are forward looking in terms of 15 or 20 years as the population grows, it goes with a lot of things that you need to put into plan and when you fail to put it into plan, it will take you unawares,” he said.

“Take for instance, if Nigeria’s decision makers, policy framers, political leaders were looking at it from a strategic angle and said okay, in 15 years time what is going to be the rate as per the population, and work with it. There is no way you could sit down and say a country with over 170 million populations would be without problems. It would come as a natural disaster or man-made. And because we are not proactive, it becomes a problem when such cases come up. So those are the challenges as a security expert, if there were such plans before Boko Haram, I don’t think the issue would have been all these bad.

“If they had envisaged that okay in the next 15 years this problem would come and prepare for it, they would have been able to manage the risk of Boko Haram and then provide alternatives but there were no planning and no alternatives and that was why 500 girls were taken away just like that. It was a big blow not only for the country but for the entire security organisations in Nigeria. What can we do to offer solution; we have to go back and begin to think and ask questions as where we go from here and begin to plan and we begin to see what lies ahead otherwise, we are not going to move forward. In Canada, US, UK, they plan ahead, so if you don’t plan ahead, it means you are planning to fail,” he explained.