ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (Army News Service) -- In recent years, people from all kinds of backgrounds, African-Americans among them, have become interested in tracing their roots back to their ancestral homes.
Not Ayo Omololu. He already knows his roots, firsthand. Omololu was born in 1968 in Kaduna, Nigeria, a member of the Yoruba people.
Today, he is the senior synchronization officer at U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command G-3. The path from Lagos, Nigeria to Aberdeen Proving Ground took him on some unexpected twists and turns.
When Omololu was in his teens, his family immigrated to the U.S. He spent the remainder of his childhood in Brooklyn, New York.
In many ways, Brooklyn was a lot like Lagos, he said. In Brooklyn, there are many ethnic groups and cultures, and as in Lagos, most people speak English, since Nigeria was once a British colony.
JOINING THE NAVY
When Omololu was working as a security guard in Brooklyn at age 19, he met a Navy recruiter who promised him a life of travel and adventure if he enlisted, which he promptly did. The Navy was everything the recruiter promised, he recalled.
He served aboard two ships, both were landing helo deck, or LHD, vessels designed to transport Marines and their gear ashore: the USS Wasp and later, the USS Iwo Jima.
During shore leave in New Jersey, Omololu met his future wife, Biola, from Newark. For the next four years, Omololu said, he was in his element, sailing out of his homeport of Norfolk, Virginia, and of course voyaging home to see Biola.
He recalled spending a lot of time patrolling areas around the Mediterranean Sea. Omololu's job was logistical in nature, budgeting and inventorying parts for weapons systems on the LHDs. "That's where I got most of my logistics and acquisition experience," he said.
REINVENTING HIMSELF
After his service, Omololu started his job search. Omololu said one of the things he liked about the Navy was serving his country. He decided the best way to continue doing that was to serve in the military as a civilian. His first duty station was with the Defense Information Systems Agency, then located in Arlington, Virginia.
He then transferred to CECOM at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Omololu said it was a nice location, close to his and his wife's family and friends. Best of all, he said, he was there to support the warfighter.
As a synchronization officer with CECOM, Omololu said his job is to "communicate and synchronize requirements and strategies between the sustainment community and program executive offices that develop and manage weapons systems." That could be anything from radios to radar and satellites.
Having his feet in both communities ensures that the system being developed will be sustainable for the warfighter, he explained. That means during the design phase, the parts need to be easy to maintain and durable for the lifetime of the system. And most importantly, the system needs to be reliable.
Having a well-built system cuts down on a lot on maintenance and replacement costs down the road. "We bake sustainability into the design," he said.
In 2010, Omololu and the entire CECOM organization relocated to Aberdeen Proving Ground under the Base Realignment and Closure process.
In 2013, Omololu did a tour of duty in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base. While there, he served as a contracting officer representative, supervising the fielding of generators and power equipment to special operations troops in remote parts of the country.
One of the things he noticed in Afghanistan was a huge reliance on contractors. Contractors were everywhere, maintaining the equipment, he recalled.
Today, the Army is doing an 181442 on that, trying to train Soldiers to maintain their own equipment to reduce the logistics train and become more self-reliant, he noted.
PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN
Omololu said he's proud to be an American citizen, but that doesn't mean that he's forgotten his roots. Since coming to the U.S., he has once visited his family in Nigeria, and he plans one day to take his wife, two daughters and son there for a vacation.
Omololu said his direct ancestors were lucky not to have been caught up in the slave trade. His other ancestors weren't as lucky. Some were taken to Maryland to work the tobacco fields and others were taken to Brazil to work on sugar cane plantations.
Regarding Nigeria, he said Lagos is a safe place to visit, but he laments that terrorists have caused trouble in the north of the country. He remembers when he was younger, Muslims and Christians lived together in harmony throughout the country.
Currently, Omololu is living in Hanover, Maryland. Biola is a nurse at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore and their children are in public school: Alexis, 18; Gabriella, 11; and Noah, 6.
Omololu is working on a doctorate degree in public administration and he plans to join the faculty of a university when he retires and stay in Maryland.
(Follow David Vergun on Twitter: @vergunARNEWS)
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