By Nzeribe Ihekwaba

PROFESSOR Mabel Ukachi Akpuaka is a distinguished chemist, teacher, mother and role model to many. She loves to find company among productive people or things that make other things happen.

Prof. Mabel Akpuaka

And like second nature, she finds the crucible of life and the laboratory as a convenient place to mix things up in precise ratio and to discover the true value of alchemy. Frequently, her cheerful demeanor is aroused, with that too familiar facial glow, whenever organic chemistry is discussed by folks who know a thing or two about that branch of science. She loves it that way and you can easily tell.

Mabel is one prodigious”Port Harcourt girl” – as folks who were born and bred in that erstwhile garden city before the Nigerian civil war tend to call themselves -and has quietly reached the zenith of a glorious academic career without fanfare. She was born to Francis Ihekwaba, OFR (Mayor of Port Harcourt, 1961-1967) and made it successfully through life despite losing her mother, Ideri, when she was about three years old.

Interestingly, academic and moral distinction has remained her primary vitae, dogging every pursuit of hers. Even the boys in her class always wondered what hit them every time Mabel takes each priced, prime position.

Today, November 8, 2016 is an affirmation, if one was ever needed, that the amazon is still on an academic roll as she is designated with a “Life-Time Achiever” Award by the Chemical Society of Nigeria in Awka.

Professor Akpuaka has always broken new grounds,and consistently too, with remarkable novelty in her research endeavours, especially in the area of synthetic and natural products’ chemistry

As if excellence is her middle name, Professor Mabel Akpuaka’s scholarship has been routinely recognized just as the Chemical Society of Nigerian has scheduled in Awka. As early as 1971, in recognition of academic excellence and distinction, she won the then East Central State Scholarship to study Chemistry at Nigeria’s premier citadel of learning, the University of Ibadan, a programme that she easily completed, gammacum laude, in 1974.After the mandatory one-year NYSC service (1975), she earned a Nigerian government scholarship for graduate (M.S.) studies at Victoria University of Manchester, United Kingdom in Synthetic Organic Chemistry graduating with a distinction in 1978. This was quickly followed by completing a doctoral program, cum honore, at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1990. Akpuaka’s doctoral thesis entitled “The Synthesis and Industrial Applications of some Heterocyclic Dyestuffs”, earned her both the Vice-Chancellor’s Award and the Faculty Award.

Professor Akpuaka has always broken new grounds, and consistently too, with remarkable novelty in her research endeavours, especially in the area of synthetic and natural products’ chemistry. Together with her generation of research students, she has carried out extensive work on the phytochemical and anti-microbial activities of families of Nigerian plants for the management of diabetes, hypertension, malaria, dermatological problems, convulsion, etc, notable among these being the successful extraction of Lupeol, an anti-cancer principle, C-methylated flavonoids,±-pyrones, tinginone, mangiferin, strictosamide, and other bioactive compounds.

A prolific writer and teacher, she has published extensively in reputable journals and published books in organic chemistry.

Professor Akpuaka has held various prestigious academic appointments since 1981 at the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu and the Nnamdi Azikiwe Uniiversity, Awka, Nigeria; the latter is where she attained the rank of professor of organic chemistry in 2003. This matriarch of the academia has served the university community in a myriad of ways: as departmental Chair, Director of School of General Studies, and with long-term membership of the University Council and Senate.

Seventeen years ago, Akpuaka became a Fellow of the Chemical Society of Nigeria and followed up with the Fellowship of the Institute of Chartered Chemists of Nigeria in 2007.
Her services to the professional organization has remained stellar, serving in various leadership positions. Although presently under recuperative care after a major surgery that had hampered her full physical functions, Akpuaka’s services to the chemistry profession, the academia and society at large has remained strong, productive and engaging while still attracting recognitions.

This year’s honorific as a “Life-Time Achiever” by the Chemical Society of Nigeria in Awka during its conference speaks to her resilience and doggedness, and was earlier preceded by the Chemistry Excellence Award to mark the International Year of Chemistry given to her at University of Uyo in 2011.

Professor Mabel Akpuaka is a devoted christian and active member of Catholic Women Organization, and the non-governmental organization called “Happy Home Foundation”, an organization dedicated to the welfare of women and children as well as the promotion of moral values.We salute this amazon of the academia and wish her many more productive years in the internet of all things in the laboratory.