How one mistaken date opened the door to four unforgettable hours with the man asking Deltans to make a U-Turn
By Foster Akpore
Every journalist hopes for that rare interview — the one that refuses to end, where every answer raises another question. Editors call them “gold.” Reporters simply call them unforgettable.
Mine began with a mistake.
Chief Joshua Akporowho Denila had invited me to join family, friends, and supporters in celebrating his birthday on June 30. Somewhere between receiving the invitation and marking my calendar, I got it wrong. Instead of arriving on the appointed day, I showed up on Sunday, June 28.
For a brief moment, I feared I had embarrassed us both. There was no reception, no music, no crowd waiting to greet the celebrant.
Then something unexpected happened. Rather than politely sending me away, Denila welcomed me with warmth, smiled at the mix-up, and invited me to sit. What followed was neither planned nor scripted — an afternoon of uninterrupted conversation stretching from about 2:30 p.m. until well after 6:00 p.m. No aides interrupting, no handlers signalling another meeting, no sound bites crafted for the evening news. Just a journalist and a man whose life has moved through entrepreneurship, technology, and now, politics.
I should admit here that my connection to Denila didn’t begin with this interview. In the early 2000s, I did my Industrial Training attachment with his firms, Hypercom Network Ltd and Microchip Technology Ltd. It was through him that I first had a sneak peek at Bill Gates’ Business at the Speed of Thought, just weeks after it was published, and it was under him that I learned much of what I still know about information technology today. Sitting across from him decades later, notebook in hand, felt less like a first interview and more like a continuation of a lesson that had simply paused for twenty-odd years.
As the hours unfolded, the conversation wandered across childhood dreams, the discipline of building businesses from scratch, artificial intelligence, corruption, education, unemployment, and the future of Delta State. Some politicians answer questions. Denila preferred conversations — a single question often becoming a thirty-minute exploration, punctuated by stories from boardrooms and lessons learned the hard way.
“You cannot continue solving today’s problems with yesterday’s methods,” he remarked at one point. “Technology is no longer a luxury. It is the infrastructure that determines whether government succeeds or fails.”
That instinct shapes everything he says. Education becomes a system for producing employable citizens. Security becomes an intelligence network supported by technology. Anti-corruption becomes less about speeches than about redesigning processes to close the gaps where abuse thrives. Listening to him, the engineer often speaks louder than the politician.
It is that same instinct, arguably, that has followed him well beyond Delta State. Earlier this year, Denila was named one of MSN Magazine’s “Top 10 Trailblazing Entrepreneurs to Follow in 2026,” recognition he shared with characteristic humility, crediting friends, family, and mentors for a milestone he insisted “belongs to all of us.” Sitting with him that Sunday afternoon, months after the accolade but long before the crowd outside his compound had gathered, it was easy to see why the recognition had come — confirmation of something anyone who has spent time with him already suspects.
There were moments of laughter over old entrepreneurial stories, and reflective silences when he spoke about watching talented young Deltans leave the state for opportunities elsewhere. Then, quietly: “The tragedy isn’t that Delta lacks resources. The tragedy is that we’ve become accustomed to thinking small despite having extraordinary possibilities.”
He doesn’t dismiss the skepticism his ambitions invite. “I know people will ask whether these ideas are too ambitious,” he said with a smile. “But every major transformation begins with someone believing it can be done.” It didn’t sound like a boast — more like the mindset of someone used to attempting big, difficult things, and I can attest to that: he is a serial entrepreneur of many firsts.
Two days later, I returned. This time, it really was June 30. The quiet compound had transformed — guests streaming in, cameras flashing, Denila barely finishing one conversation before the next well-wisher arrived. Watching him move through the crowd, I smiled at my earlier mistake. Had I arrived only on this day, I’d have left with pleasantries and a standard photo. Instead, forty-eight hours early, I’d been given something better: four uninterrupted hours with the man behind the campaign — and, in a way, with the man who’d taught me my trade twenty years before I ever came to write about him.
Sometimes journalism’s greatest discoveries aren’t the result of meticulous planning. Sometimes they begin with getting the date completely wrong.
In Part Two: “The Builder Before the Politician,” we trace Joshua Denila’s journey from technology entrepreneur to governorship candidate, and the experiences that shaped the vision he now calls U-Turn 2027.