By Zerry Ihekwaba

IT is that unique time in academia when lectures and tutorials must pause, when the path of excellence assumes a different meridian purpose, and the pursuit of the truth is not truncated but reinforced for greater impetus.

Now is the time when one takes a different direction or domicile as policy dictates and a professor is compelled to celebrate excellence upon the attainment of the natal age of three scores and ten.

Professor Anele Ihekwaba insists that though he may have to retire because of doctrine, but he is not tired or bereft of ideas at 70 years of age sojourning at Choba. Choba is a serene, suburban outskirts of Nigeria’s premier oil city, Port Harcourt, and a prime real estate of the Garden City metropoli.

It has been a natural domicile and excellent attraction for a citadel that welcomed and haboured as many intellectual behemoths as the circumstances of Nigeria’s peculiarities helped exit many Nigerian universities since the 1970s.

Since inception the University of Port Harcourt’s Choba campus has produced several alumnae of distinction as well as being home to professors of international repute. And since 1989, Anele Ihekwaba has called Choba his academic residence for the practice and didactic work of professing medicine.

The journey of cavorting the internal recesses of human anatomy, seeking to expand the frontiers of knowledge in the evolving search for the truth has led Anele Ihekwaba to join in advancing studies in internal medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology, whilst focusing on the digestive system and the liver.

The love and skill for the medical profession for Ihekwaba was honed at the University of Lagos from 1972 where he commenced his primary medical training that culminated with a summa cum laude graduation in 1978 at the final MB, BS, examination, earning him top prizes in Medicine, Pathology and Therapeutics.

He decided on an academic career quite early in this journey with rotatory internship at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, and a subsequent placement at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, UBTH. After his compulsory National Youth Service spent with the One Brigade, Nigeria Army, in Minna, he headed home to work as a Medical Officer with the old Imo State Health Management Board with assignment at the Queen Elizabeth Specialist Hospital in Umuahia.

Prof. Ihekwaba later proceeded to the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, UNTH, Enugu to train as a physician whilst concurrently working for a Master of Science degree in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

On completion of his training, the then Anambra State University of Technology hired him to help start the Pharmacology Department for its newly established medical school. Hardly had he settled down than Professor Chris O. Anah sent a Macedonian call to him to come over to the University of Port Harcourt, UniPort, as the medical school was about to lose accreditation on account of insufficient staff in 1989.

Many people influenced his academic career, including his father, Francis Ihekwaba, the Mayor of Port Harcourt (1961-1966) and his mother, Esther who both insisted that light has no business with the bushel. Additionally he recognises the contributions of Dr. VC Ihekwaba and Sir ECO Uzoukwu, as well as his teachers at the University of Lagos such as Dr. JA Ekundayo (Biology), Prof. Akinsanya (Chemistry), the son of the late Odemo of Ishara, Prof. Felix Dosekun (Physiology), Prof. Alex Eyimofo Boyo (Chemical Pathology), Dr. VPN Mordi (Anatomical Pathology), Prof. Deji Femi Pearse, Dr. OO Elegbeleye, Prof. Thomas Johnson (Internal Medicine), Prof. Amechi Anumonye, and Dr. Abua Nwaefuna, the latter especially who taught him and demonstrated to his utter consternation the science and art of hypnosis and abreaction.

At the UNTH, Prof. Ihekwaba fed from the acclaimed nourishments of Prof. Gilbert Onuaguluchi, an erstwhile Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, and Vice Chancellor of University of Jos. He was the first person to advise him on how to abhor desk-top publishing (the art of publishing scientific papers from office theoretical basis without performing any experiments), for which he was hated by the young lecturers who wanted to become professors before they were due. He taught him diligence, intuition, and keenness in experimental research, as well as how to present papers at conferences.

Prof. Ihekwaba also remains indebted to Chief Dr. O. R. Long-John who as Chief Medical Director at the UPTH imbibed in him the extraordinary realisation that commitment and selfless service to the medical profession is unassailable. In his entire career, two physicians, Dr. Sylvester O. Ukabam, who encouraged him to take to gastroenterology sub-specialty at the UNTH, and Prof. Chris Anah at UniPort, played major roles for his successful accomplishments.

Three years after joining the UniPort, Prof. Ihekwaba authored a proposal for the establishment of the gastroenterology unit at the teaching hospital. This unit has since become successful in training world class specialists in the field. Prof. Ihekwaba has also been an external examiner to the University of Lagos, University of Benin, University of Nigeria, and Niger Delta University, among others, as well as an examiner to the West African Postgraduate College of Physicians, and the National Postgraduate Medical College of Physicians.

Ihekwaba also became the chairman of the gastroenterology subspecialty and was recently awarded the Doctor of Medicine, MD, degree by the National College. He has published several scientific and academic papers as well as served in the Editorial Board of the professional journals of his specialty.

The university and the teaching hospital found Prof. Ihekwaba worthy to chair several university-wide committees that looked into many administrative, disciplinary and related matters and was for eight years the Chairperson of the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Unit of the Hospital.

He was a member of the Hospital Board, and later a member of the Governing Council where he left indelible marks. His last major assignment was to lead the committee that explored several out-of-court settlements of over fifty cases involving the University.

After such a glorious service and professorial work at the University of Port Harcourt, it is now time for Professor Anele Ihekwaba to retire although he is not yet tired. Obviously upon the attainment of the proverbial three scores and ten in natal age, and after over three decades of academic work, the time is now ripe and proper for him to seek leave for a career pause.

Academia has a unique way of nurturing or mentoring talent. At the University of Port Harcourt, several leading figures of the medical profession paved the way for the success of Professor Ihekwaba, and we understand that such academic titans include Professor SJS Cookey, the second Vice Chancellor of the university who hired him in 1989 as well as Professor Chris O. Anah, who as the Provost of the College of Health Sciences ‘dragged’ him away from the then Anambra State University of Technology and brought him to the Port Harcourt.

Prof. Ihekwaba had previously served under Prof. Anah in 1978 at the UBTH and was compelled to join him and Prof. Osaretin Odia to UniPort.

Several UniPort vice chancellors recognised his unique talent and appointed him into various administrative positions or committees, and he remains indebted to such personages including Professors ND Briggs, Don Baridam, JA Ajienka, and NES Laale.

In all of these appointments, special mention must be made of the exemplary role of the immediate past Pro-Chancellor of the university, Professor Mvendaga Jibo, on whose intervention and records indicate exemplified best practices and process improvement strategies in presiding over meetings of persons with diverse backgrounds, character peculiarities and academic dispositions.

All over the world, most professors and their assistants who tend to the pursuit of the truth embrace the uniqueness and indefatigability of their remit. They profess honesty as personal mandate and seek the progress of the universe of knowledge as something necessary, indispensable, as well as essential, or what the wise men of the East would admit as a sine qua non.

A valedictory lecture tend to set the stage for that formal salute to signal the end of a glorious career, delivered in the presence of peers and academe, and in keeping with its Latin root antecedent, valedicere, which means “to say farewell”.

 It is a momentous epoch at which the lecturer seizes the opportunity to share his/her experiences with his/her co-workers, a chance to place on the record notable recollections of the time and accomplishments that collegiality begat in the evolving search for the truth.

At the University of Port Harcourt, available records indicate that 19 professorial valedictorians have stood at the lectern to deliver their lectures, three of them retired from the College of Health Sciences. Prof. Anele Ihekwaba is scheduled to step out as the fourth from the College of Health Sciences and the second from the Department of Medicine to embrace the unique record.

At the Academic Hall of the University of Port Harcourt in Choba, on July 13, 2021, a beehive of academic friends of the truth would gather with professors and their adjuncts, researchers and students, and in the presence of familial supporters to witness the final salute of an apostle of academic freedom.

Professor Anele Ejikeme Ihekwaba is prepared to engage with that ritual in the proverbial footsteps of many wise ones. Since the beginning of the Nigerian experience, many retiring professors have been opportuned to salute each other’s tenure of excellence with finesse and respect.

Now Port Harcourt is blessed to host this special valedictorian lecture of another academic who professes excellence and about to embrace the future with boldness and confidence.

This exaugural lecture has prompted extraordinary interest in the local medical profession as it explores unique areas of professional challenges to the clinician and the non-clinical lecturer serving in university committees in the face of other commitments to the health and wellbeing of patients.

Dr. Zerry Ihekwaba wrote from Florida, USA

Vanguard News Nigeria