The Obi of Onitsha andChairman Anambra State Traditional Council, Dr. Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe, has been appointed chairman, Board of Directors of Unilever Nigeria Plc.

A statement by the company’s Corporate Relations Manager, Mr. Yemi Adeboye, Obi Achebe’s varied professional experience spanning over 40 years put him up for the new position.

The royal father, who joined the Board of Unilever Nigeria Plc in March 2003 as non-executive director, is expected to keep the business conglomerate of long standing afloat among its peers.

Obi Achebe in his thirty years career with The Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, of Nigeria, where he earlier served before he became Obi, held senior positions in several strategic functions in Nigeria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

He became an executive director of Shell Nigeria in 1981 and subsequently was director of several other Shell companies in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Graduate of Chemistry from Standford University, California with a MBA from Columbia University both 1966 and 1969 respectively, the monarch, who also is a member of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (mni), has served on the governing councils of the Petroleum Training Institute and the Nigerian Employers’ Consultative Association and is currently chairman of the boards of Diamond Bank PLC, Universal Insurance Company Limited and OMAK Maritime Limited.

He has also had mark outside the business circles having served as a delegate to the National Political Reforms Conference in 2005 and in 2010 became Chancellor, Kogi State University. He is a life member of Nigerian Economic Society, Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Management and Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.