The 2022 City People Outstanding Talents Awards lit up Lagos with a celebration of innovation and excellence, where the spotlight fell on Ejielo Ogbuefi, winner of the prestigious Supply Chain & Business Award. Judges described this year’s edition as one of the most competitive in the award’s history, with more than 100,000 nominations received from across Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America.
The Supply Chain & Business Award recognises professionals who are reshaping logistics, supply chain management, and business practices through measurable innovation and operational excellence. Ogbuefi’s selection was hailed as “unanimous, emphatic, and inevitable,” with the panel praising both the scale of his achievements and his ability to set new standards across industries.
At the time of this recognition, Ogbuefi was pursuing his Master of Science in Engineering Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2021–2023), combining academic research with real-world applications. From Amherst, he applied advanced skills in business intelligence, analytics, and automation to deliver transformative results. At Novanta Inc., he drove immediate impact by increasing container utilisation, automating recurring reports to cut reporting time, and building ETL pipelines that strengthened data centralisation. Judges highlighted his ability to improve product flow by 15 percent as a textbook case of supply chain optimisation.
His earlier contributions at Mac-Umec Associate Limited in Nigeria reflected the same pattern of excellence. There, he optimised SQL queries for critical financial KPIs, automated workflows with Python that reduced manual effort by nearly a third and developed Tableau dashboards that shortened executive reporting turnaround by 25 percent. These solutions gave leadership teams faster access to accurate, real-time insights and improved their ability to respond to market changes.
Beyond his corporate achievements, Ogbuefi has also distinguished himself as a researcher and thought leader. Between 2020 and 2022, he authored and co-authored more than 30 research papers that explored business intelligence, automation, and supply chain innovation. His work covering topics from advanced data governance for cloud platforms to affordable automation frameworks for SMEs has become a reference point for businesses seeking practical, scalable, and cost-effective ways to harness analytics.
Accepting the award virtually from Amherst, Massachusetts, Ogbuefi delivered a heartfelt message that drew wide applause from the live audience in Lagos and viewers across the diaspora:
“This is more than a trophy. It is a signal that the work we do to improve supply chains and operations matters for businesses, for jobs, and for the economy. This award is not only for me it is for every young Nigerian who believes that technology and analytics can create solutions that compete globally and deliver prosperity locally.”
City People editors described his remarks as one of the most memorable moments of the evening, noting that his words captured the essence of the awards, a call to use innovation and data intelligence as tools for progress. His victory, they added, is symbolic of the growing role of data-driven decision-making in Nigeria’s future economy.
Since 1996, City People Magazine has used its Outstanding Talents Awards to spotlight achievers whose work is driving measurable progress across industries. By honouring Ejielo Ogbuefi with the 2022 Supply Chain & Business Award, the magazine reaffirmed its mission to showcase innovators whose solutions deliver tangible results, create opportunities, and inspire the next generation.
Ogbuefi’s story carries a powerful message: today’s supply chain and business excellence depend on professionals who can turn data into insight and insight into action. His journey demonstrates how technology, research, and execution can combine to transform industries, empower smaller businesses, and shape a more competitive future.
