A legal luminary and Abia born philanthropist, Mr. Etigwe Uwa, SAN has today empowered 25 persons with MTN Lumos mobile electricity solar system as he received an Award as the “Ambassador of Christ” from the Men’s Christian Association (MCA), of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria, Ehere Model Parish Aba, Abia State, in recognition of his selfless service to God and humanity.
The award was presented to the legal luminary by the Minister in-Charge of Ehere Model Parish, Very Rev. Israel Iduma Chukwu during the grand finale of 2021 Father’s Day celebration at the church auditorium.
The Minister thanked Mr. Uwa for his giant strides in bringing justice, equity and inclusiveness in his professional engagements, adding that it was only leaders who have the spirit of God in them could take the bold step of serving Him and humanity selflessly.
According to his citation, he attended Methodist Boys’ High School and King’s College, both in Lagos.
He is a law graduate of the University of Lagos. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators UK and was in 2009 conferred with the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria.
He holds a Masters Degree in International Relations and Finance from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of the Tufts University Boston. He is currently studying to obtain a second Masters Degree in Taxation at the University of Oxford.
Etigwe Uwa is a legal practitioner and Senior Partner at the commercial law firm of Streamsowers & Kohn where he heads the firm’s litigation and Arbitration departments.
He led the team of lawyers who represented the victims of the Pfizer Trovan Drug clinical trial in Kano. 11 of the children who were involved in the trial died on the spot and 189 others had varying degrees of deformity. The case was fought in Kano Abuja and New York and went up to the United States Supreme Court before a settlement was achieved. That settlement led to the building of a $30 Million ultra Morden diagnostic hospital in Kano and payment of compensation to all the victims of the drug trial.
He also pioneered securities class actions in Nigeria when in 2007 he filed a class action against First Bank of Nigeria PLC to obtain compensation by way of interests for subscribers to the First Bank Hybrid public offer of 2007 whose monies were kept for almost 9 months and whose application for shares were rejected without payment of reasonable interests on the monies paid as deposit for shares. He is currently leading NNPC’s team of lawyers in the defence of a multi-billion Production Sharing Contracts dispute between the NNPC and many of the international oil companies.
He is the Chairman of Lumos Nigeria which in partnership with MTN provides mobile electricity through solar panels to over 120 thousand customers in Nigeria. He is also the Chairman of NOI Polls Limited a company which pioneered opinion polling in Nigeria in partnership with Gallup Polls of the US.
He is a director of Mara Phones Nigeria, the first African company to embark on the manufacture of smartphones having ultra Morden smartphones factories in Rwanda, South Africa and in the process of setting up one in Nigeria.
He has variously served as Chairman of the Aviation Committee of the Nigeria Bar Association Section on Business Law; Co-Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association Human Rights Committee between 2012 and 2014. He is currently the Acting Chairman of the Board of the African University for Science and Technology Abuja. He served as Chairman of TrustBond Mortgage Bank Plc between 2013 and 2019. He drafted The Civil Aviation Bill 2003 which has been passed as the Civil Aviation Act 2006.
Etigwe, in his response on the award conferred on him by the Church, expressed his profound gratitude to the Church and to God and promised to do for humility and for God’s work.
He further asserted that it was quite surprising that those who belonged to a much more enlightened generation have decided to politicize issues of insecurity as such parochial thinking was antithetical to the stride of any generation or society to make any progress.
Uwa appealed to fathers to rise up to their parental responsibilities by helping government to arrest the high level of insecurity affecting the state and country.
