Umuaka Times engages Benji Nwachukwu.
7 min read
Medical scientist and community integration advocate, Mr Benjamin Nwachukwu, well known as Benji Nwachukwu, a pharmacist from Umuele, one of the 10 villages in the old Umuaka community is someone who remains a reporter’s delight any day. Benji Nwachukwu has a form of humility that outshines his personality. When he was growing up, due to his doggedness, oratory and love for literature, many of his contemporaries assumed he would be a lawyer. Years later, Benji Nwachukwu ended up becoming a pharmacist of international repute.
As a little boy of 9 years old, his mother just passed away towards the end of Nigerian civil war and his world turned upside down. With his father still around, Benji Nwachukwu who was born Benjamin Eberechukwu Nwachukwu and later changed to Benjamin Uzoma Nwachukwu had to face both the storms motherless children faced as well as other domestic and academic challenges. Fast-forward to 1994, Mr Benji Nwachukwu lost his father and that signaled the end of an era for his parents.
In a brief interview with Umuaka Times, Nwachukwu told the Umuaka Times reporters who visited him that he was nursing the ambition right from 1988 to travel to the United States. Hear him: “I was supposed to have left Nigeria in 1988 to the USA in pursuit of my PhD in pharmacology at the Massachusetts Collage of Pharmacy.”
Eventually, the man with a mission finally left Nigeria for Namibia where he practiced pharmacy for 10 years. According to him, “I rose to the height of pharmacy profession in the country. Pressures from my wife to join them in the United States made me relocate to the USA. My family left for American in 2005 and I was leaving in Namibia alone. A country ravaged by HIV-AIDS.”
Since 2005, Mr Benji Nwachukwu has been living in America. A peep into the academic ladders Nwachukwu had climbed shows that he is a product of University of Benin where he read pharmacy and graduated in 1983 with second class upper division. He was one of the best five students in his department. Nwachukwu had practiced pharmacy for 13 years in Nigeria and 10 out of those years, he had his private pharmaceutical outlet in Onitsha. Other institutions Nwachukwu went through include, Alvan Ikolu Collage of Education where he read physics and chemistry. De Montfort University, Leicester UK, 2002 where he read Health and Social Care Management at the University of Orange Free State in Bloemfontein in 2004 under the same discipline.
All these academic activities and mountains successfully climbed have formed and shaped the intellectual baseline of the man who came, saw and conquered.
Umuaka Times learnt that his son, Benjamin Jr Nwachukwu just finished his Masters at Pertue University after doing his first degree at the Michigan State University, all in the United States.
Another of his sons, Chiemeziem Uzoma Nwachukwu just finished his first degree and has gone to obtain another degree to qualify him as a dentist. Nwachukwu has a daughter, Miracle Nwachukwu who is reading medicine. They all are on scholarship.
Last week, the super intellectual giant spoke on a wide range of issues concerning Umuaka and other societies.
Excerpts:
On the criminal quest for money by youths.
People want to attain to the sky, to the high heavens by sudden flight. Life does not work out that way. There is no substitute, there has never been and there will never be for hard work. One philosopher said, that people plan their way to the mountain top….Things have so terribly and radically changed. Our society has become so Machiavellian. During our growing up days, it was the means that justified the end. I remember also that that time, when you are seen with just three penny, Your mother will question and investigate you. She would drag you and ask you how did you get the money until you convince her that an uncle etc gave it to you.
On the decline of education and value system.
We have passed those days when what you knew and not who you knew determined your place in the society. We have passed through those days when we were drunk with knowledge. For example, in the university, I was famous for putting on suits, when I entered exam hall in those days and saw students smiling, I would feel sad because the papers would be cheap. That was the confidence we had those days. Our youths today want to become multi millionaires without paying the price. Some people have got wealth suddenly and such wealth is only seen by people that are selectively myopic and it does not last. The wealth that lasts is the wealth that can reproduce. Without education which gives you the systematic tool, it will be hard to achieve this.
On faith-based organizations that preach favour instead of hard work.
That is one of the terrible deceptions of our time. If you look at Europe and America, the people who brought Christianity to us…. the way they practice it is different from the way we do here in Africa. Of course I am a Christian and I was born an Anglican and I worship with Mountain of Fire in the United States. I read the Bible and I disagree with the pastor sometimes. Don’t condemn me. Read Luke Chapter 9 vs 37. Let judgment be that of God. One of the greatest problems of our pastors today is that they are selective in what they are teaching and that is fallacy for the most part. You don’t tell someone that the only way to success is through favour. If you like pray for a year. Pastors have taken advantage of the ignorance of the masses. People can no longer reason. How do you justify the fact that pastors drive big cars, send their children to good schools and even build universities and yet, the poor members who contribute the money cannot afford such? Remember, “I receive it, I receive it” does not give it to you. People have been reduced so low to the extent that all they do now is to go to church and clap all day long and resign to fate. People should see this deception from there.
You see when you try to educate people about these, people will see you as an antichrist and too bad, the activities of these pastors have brought a lot of negative influences in the society. Prayer is a part of it. I believe that there is a Supreme Being. However, preaching that tells you that you will stay at a place and manna will fall from heaven is a deception.
On the collapse of education in Umuaka.
It is the misplacement of priorities. It is also erroneous, false and misleading impression that some people come back to Nigeria and project deceptive images to the people. They create the fantasy that once you leave this country, you are automatically made and overseas are El Dorado. That is why a good number of Nigerians has perished in the desert and high seas trying to cross to Europe. On the other hand, there must be a drive. In our time we had role models. This does not mean there is a dearth of role models today in Umuaka. In our time we challenged ourselves. I thought physics, biology etc from Umuaka to Ekwe, Okwudor and Amaigbo. I remember I helped Tim Obiwuru solve some hard problems in physics and more. Even Damian Onwukwe also helped me to solve some problems during our days. We all knew our limits. There was a mutual understanding then. I would visit Solo Obioha, Tony Ihekanwa and we would brainstorm. At every corridor centered on academics we had that mutual interaction then.
The solution to fallen education in Umuaka.
People like you are supposed to challenge these younger ones. We should go back to where we started. Money is only a means to an end and not an end itself. There are formulas that produce the best results. It was Henry David Thoreau, an American philosopher who once said that the greatest asset at the disposal of man is his ability to evaluate his actions by conscious desires. It is education that gives you that tool. Second World War British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill equally said, “The further backward you can look, is the further forward you can see.”
Someone said, “When you do not remember history, you are condemned to repeat that history.” There has to be a total reappraisal to our entire value system. Some of us the elderly ones have also failed the younger generations.
On autonomous community creations:
It has never helped us. That was a mistake that should never have been. We were told that it was going to bring governance to the people nearer home and develop our place but rather it created disunity. I still write Umuele Umuaka and some people do not like it. I hate explaining “Amazano” to people. We were happier before as one. The autonomy that we have got has led to the fractionalization of villages that were otherwise united. It has created enemies across borders. We are yet to see the facilities and benefits that were projected to us that the autonomy would bring. In my opinion I would advise we go back to where we started.
