EJEVIOME ELOHO OTOBO was born on 10th October, 1951, the first of five children of Chief JOHN H. OTOBO (1924-1998) and Mrs. Fanny Onogbeta OTOBO (1930-2015). He grew up in Otibio-Owhe (land of coco-nut in Owhe) which name was changed in December, 2008 to Otor-Igho (land of money), one of the towns that make up the Owhe clan in Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta State. He attended St. Peters Primary School in Otibio-Owhe from 1958-1963.

Ejeviome (as he was fondly called by the maternal grandmother from Ozoro, who gifted him that name) had his secondary education at Notre Dame College, Ozoro from 1964 to 1968. On completion of his secondary education, he travelled to Burutu, Delta State, where he spent 1969 with his uncle, Mr. Simon C. Otobo, who was working as a Fire Fighter at the Niger River Transport Company, a subsidiary of the United African Company (Nigeria) Limited.  He worked briefly at Niger River Transport Company as a Clerk. Uninspired by both the working and social environment in Burutu, he left at the end of 1969 and returned to Otibio-Owhe, where his father encouraged him to find a clerical job in the Midwest government.

In early 1970, Eloho (as he was named by the mother) travelled with his father to Benin-city, then capital of Mid-West state, to take the examination for clerical officers of the Mid-West government. Following his successful performance in the examination, he was hired as Clerical Officer and posted to the State Government Treasury at Ughelli, Delta State. He was subsequently elevated to the position of Treasury Cashier.  It was during his stay at Ughelli that he prepared for the Advanced Level examinations by reading books written by Nigerian authors, rather than enrolling in foreign correspondence tuition courses, a prevalent practice at that time, in Geography, Government and Economics. Of these three subjects, it was only geography that he had studied at the secondary school level. He passed the Advanced level examinations at the first attempt in 1971 and was admitted the following year to University of Lagos, where he enrolled for the Bachelors of Science degree in Sociology and graduated in 1975, at the Second Class-Upper Level. 

By the time, he graduated from the University, the National Youth Service Corps had been created in 1973 and he served in the third batch from 1975-1976. He was deployed to the North-West state, reporting to Argungu, in present Kebbi state for orientation course in August 1975. Subsequently, he was posted to the Ministry of Social Affairs Office in Kontagora in present Niger State. During the youth service corps, he interviewed for  jobs in the federal public service and in a management research institution. He initially settled for the position of Management Assistant at the Centre for Management Development (CMD), then at Ilupeju, Lagos. That job came with the promise that he would be sent abroad to do his MBA after completing two years.  However, after working at CMD for a month and half, he, in company of three colleagues who were also working at CMD, visited the Federal Public Service Commission at Independence Building in Lagos to check on the outcome of the interview for the position of Foreign Service Officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  To his pleasant surprise, he found that he had also been successful in that interview. He left CMD and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 10th  August 1976.


Following an induction course for newly recruited foreign service officers, Eloho was deployed to the African Affairs Department of the Ministry. Soon thereafter in November 1976, he was posted on attachment to the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Attachment is the diplomatic speak for internship to enable young officers to learn the diplomatic practices and gain insights into the conduct and management of foreign policy. He returned from attachment in early 1978. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was assigned Second Secretary for Commonwealth Matters in the European Affairs Department.  His first priority on return from attachment was to get married. It was during this period he met his would-be wife, ESTHER ARUORIWO UROGHOME, from Emevor, in Isoko North Local Government of Delta State, who he married in 1978. At that time, Esther was teaching at the Primary School in Uruovo, (now Otor-Owhe), about 5 miles from Otibio-Owhe.

Later that year, he was posted to the Embassy of Nigeria in Jakarta, Indonesia. At the Embassy, he served as First Secretary (Economic Affairs), with responsibility for monitoring and reporting on economic trends and development in Indonesia and prepared policy briefs on economic relations between Nigeria and Indonesia. At the end of that year, he was posted to the Embassy of Nigeria in Beijing, People’s Republic of China, where he served from January 1981 to October 1983 as First Secretary (Political Affairs). His responsibilities included monitoring and reporting on political trends and developments in China as well as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea –to which the Ambassador in China was concurrently accredited. During his tour of duty in China, he accompanied the Nigerian Ambassador or visiting official delegations from Nigeria four times to North Korea and once to Vietnam. 

It was during his tour of duty in Beijing that he sat for the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) examinations which are pre-requisites to graduate management schools in the United States of America.  By this time, he had made up his mind to seek admission to some of the elite universities in the US. On his return to Nigeria in 1983, he submitted an application form for admission to the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, to which he was admitted in 1984. He was accompanied by his wife.  He likes to joke to his friends that he enrolled at Harvard Kennedy School expecting to earn a paper certificate --the masters’ degree in public administration (with specialisation in international political economy). In the event, he also earned a human certificate: After graduating from Harvard, he returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and he was assigned initially to the African Affairs Department and, shortly thereafter, to the Policy Planning Department (PPD), which serves as the In-house Think Tank for the ministry. By this time, he had attained the rank of a Counsellor. In September 1986, he was posted to the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the United Nations in New York, as Senior Counsellor (Economic Affairs).  His tasks included preparing briefs, speeches and background papers on economic matters, for the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations on issues before the United Nations General Assembly.  

Two years later, in August 1988, he was promoted to the rank of Minister Counsellor and Head of Economic Affairs at the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the United Nations, New York. In this capacity, he provided leadership for the Nigerian Economic team to the United Nations; represented Nigeria in meetings of the Economic and Financial (Second) Committee of the UN General Assembly; and represented Nigeria at major international economic negotiations within and outside New York. That same year, he was elected Vice Chairman of the Second (Economic and Financial) Committee at the 43rd Session UN General Assembly. In 1989, he served as Co-ordinator and spokesman for the Group of 77 negotiations on external debt of developing countries. From 1987-1989, he served as the Co-ordinator of the African Group of Economic Experts in which capacity he led the negotiations with other regional groups on a wide range of issues of interest to the African Group of the Second Committee of the UN General Assembly.

Towards the end of his posting at the Permanent Mission in New York, he joined the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1990. At ECA, he served in many roles. Initially as Project Expert for the Special Action Programme in Administration Management (SAPAM) Regional Project, Economic Commission for Africa. From 1993-1999, he served as Programme Analyst in the Programme Planning, Finance and Evaluation Division, Economic Commission for Africa.  In that position, he coordinated the preparation of various policy reports to the annual meetings of the Commission (the Conference of African Ministers responsible for Economic and Social Development and Planning); served as the focal point for several of ECA’s activities and initiatives, including the International Conference on Reviving Private Investment in Africa held in Accra in 1996; participated in the design and implementation of major institutional reform efforts initiated at ECA since in the mid-1990s and helped in the articulation of  the document titled Serving Africa Better: Strategic Directions for the Economic Commission for Africa” (1996) which provided the framework for policy priority-setting, programme restructuring and managerial reforms at ECA from 1996-2005. He represented ECA in a number of inter-Secretariat Working Groups on policy issues pertaining to Africa. He was one of the members of the ECA-OAU (precursor of the African Union) Joint Secretariat Task Force on political and economic integration of Africa formed to develop ideas on the implementation of the 1991 Abuja Treaty on the establishment of the African Economic Community. 

In 1999, he was promoted to   Chief, Policy Planning and Programme Development Section, Office of Policy Planning and Resource Management, Economic Commission for Africa., a position he held till March 2002. He performed four main functions in this position:  the managerial leadership, strategic planning, programme development, and policy co-ordination for the secretariat of the Commission. During this period, he was a member of the ECA team that supported the process of articulating the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and also led the ECA Team to the First Technical Preparatory Meeting in 2000 for the African Heads of State Summit on Health which adopted the 2001 Abuja Declaration, committing African countries to allocate at least 15 percent of their annual budgets to the health sector. While at ECA, he was invited, in his personal recognition, to deliver lectures at the African Development Institute of the African Development Bank and the Joint African Institute (of the ADB, IMF and The World Bank), Abidjan in the Seminar series on Governance and Growth. In all, he spent twelve years at ECA in Addis Ababa.

In April 2002, he transferred on promotion to the Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where he held the position of Principal Affairs Officer in the Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa and the Least Developed Countries (OSCAL). Following the folding of OSCAL into the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa at the United Nations, New York -- established to support of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), he was transferred to that office as Deputy Director, Policy Analysis and Monitoring Unit.  The highlights of his tenure in that Office included serving as the ex-officio Secretary to the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Panel on International Support to NEPAD, representing and reading the speech on the behalf of the UN Secretary General at the 4th July,  London African Business Conference held  preparatory to The Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005; and being part of the UN Secretariat delegation to the African Union Commission in September 2006 to discuss the UN-AU Ten Year Capacity Building Programme.  That discussion paved the way for the signing of the Declaration on Enhancing UN-AU Cooperation: Framework for the Ten-Year Capacity Building Programme for the African Union in November 2006 signed by Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, and Alpha Konare, then Chairperson of the African Union Commission. 

Following the establishment of the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) in 2006, as part of the reforms approved the UN World Summit of 2005, he was appointed as the first Director and Deputy Head of PBSO, where he also acted as Assistant Secretary-General from February-August 2009.  At PBSO, he led the Office’s efforts in assisting the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) to develop peacebuilding strategies, including supporting governance reforms and reconciliation processes,  for countries on the agenda of the PBC (Burundi, Central African Republic, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone); supervised the work related to the follow-up, monitoring and periodic reporting on the implementation of the peacebuilding strategies; and formulated benchmarks for monitoring  progress in the implementation of peacebuilding strategies. On 28 September 2011, he was appointed as Ambassador-in-situ, by the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in recognition of his contribution to Nigeria’s diplomacy and the foreign policy. He retired from the United Nations in October, 2013. 

In November, 2013 he was appointed as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Peacebuilding and Global Economic Policy at the Global Governance Institute, Brussels, Belgium-- a position he has held since retirement. From 2014-2016, he served as a member of the External Experts Advisory Board of the Informing Conflict Prevention, Resolution and Response: The Role of Media in Violent Conflict (INFOCORE) Project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration.  

Since retiring from the United Nations, he has worked as a consultant for the UN Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) at United Nations Headquarters in New York on the preparation of: The Secretary General’s Biennial Reports on the review of implementation of the commitments made towards Africa’s Development (2014-2016);  the  Report on The Role of Early Warning in Silencing the Guns (2017);  the Study titled Assessment of the Conflict Prevention Capabilities of African Regional Economic Communities (2018). He served as a consultant for the African Union Office to the United Nations, New York on preparation of the Common African Position on the 2020 Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture (2020) and, in 2021, he is working as the Lead Consultant for United Nations Development Programme Regional Service Centre for Africa (UNDP-RSCA) on Re-imagining Governance and Peacebuilding in Africa.

 The African Development Bank has twice invited him to contribute to its flagship reports: The 2007 African Development Report -- Natural Resources for Sustainable Development in Africa and the 2001 African Development Report -- Fostering Good Governance in Africa.

Ambassador Otobo’ articles have been published by The Guardian, Thisday, The Nation, Premium Times, The New Diplomat, Prime Business Africa in Nigeria; as well as  Jeune Afrique (Paris) and Financial Times (London). He is a member of the Editorial Board of both the New Diplomat and Prime Business Africa 

Ambassador Otobo has guest-lectured at the City College of the City University of New York; the New School University, New York; Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, New York; The Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia; the University of California, Berkeley; the Global Affairs Division of Rutgers University, New Jersey; and the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

Ambassador Otobo is widely published and his areas of research interest and writing include peacebuilding, public service reforms, institutional development, governance, regulatory policy and management, and international trade. He co-edited African Development in the 21st Century: Adebayo Adedeji’s Theories and Contributions (2015) as well as authored Consolidating Peace in Africa: The Role of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (2015) and Africa in Transition: A New Way of Looking at Progress in the Region (2017). The book Africa in Transition: A New Way of Looking at Progress in the Region was nominated for the Grand Prix of Literary Associations Award, 2018 in the Research category.  

Ambassador Otobo was as active in local community and Church affairs as he was in international affairs. He served as Vice President of the Isoko Association New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut from 2009-2013 and was a member of the Isoko Action Committee of the Isoko Association of North America, which played a peace advocacy role for the political solidarity, economic development and social progress of Isoko people in Delta state in Nigeria. He served as the Secretary of Holy Name Society of Annunciation -Our Lady of Fatima (Catholic) Church in Crestwood/Scarsdale from 2017-2022*, (original v. read -"2024") 

Ambassador Otobo was married and has four children.


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