The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC), Dr. Chidia Maduekwe, has stated why he left medicine for politics. According to him, politics is a continuation of his medical practice through another way In an in interview with VINCENT KALU, the boss of the strategic Federal Government agency for the promotion and development of Nigeria’s film industry assets noted how his elder brother, the late Chief Ojo Maduekwe and himself entered the Nigerian political history of two siblings winning election on the same day to the Senate and the House of Representatives respectively.
You turned 70 last Sunday. How has the journey been?
It has been a journey of grace; a journey full of tumultuous encounter. But it’s been a rewarding journey of grace coming always at the eleventh hour. I’m grateful that my Almighty Creator has always made it possible that no shame at any point has come to me; I have never suffered shame; he has kept my head above waters and I look back with great gratitude.
How was growing up like?
My growing up was very interesting. Being the son of a headmaster, we had our setting in the rural area growing up, which has an impact on me from my childhood to my adulthood. Being a headmaster means that the children were introduced to education early in life, attending schools, hoping to centre our lives on issues that are academic. I think that laid the foundation for my life, and as I grew up, I still have some of those childhood experiences, which helped in colouring my perceptions and attributes to life. Maybe, that is why I have always thought from a provincial perspective, either by way of setting up medical structures that is rural community-based or looking at the issue of audio visual industry again that has touch with the community or even as a young growing student, who happened to be cut off by the civil war, and finding myself in the rural setting contributing my own bit at the side I found myself.
What have been your memorable moments?
My memorable moments started from where we lived in Umu Osu in Nsulu, Abia State, where my father was a headmaster. I always recall when the construction of the Ururuka road commenced, and I was amazed at the heavy duty equipment – bulldozers and other earthmoving machines pulling down giant trees, turning the earth and creating a road in the middle of the forest. I still remember that experience of road construction with great sense of nostalgia.
Again, I won’t forget the day the prayer bell rang by 5am, in Asaga, my village in Ohafia Local Government Area, Abia State, in 1968, and my parents were still sleeping, and I took a lonely walk all the way to OGSS, Amaekpu Ohafia (a distance of more than six kilometres) and joined a Mercedes Bens 911 lorry going to Amaraku, Imo State, the then headquarters of the Biafran Command, and presented myself to join the Biafran army.
Those moments remain memorable. Of course when I was in the University of Ibadan, as a medical student, it happened that my elder brother, who was in charge of my sponsorship was no longer in a position to do that, and my parents didn’t have the money to pay for my school; I had no brother, no sister that was able to bring one kobo for my school fees. Then, I took to the streets, and approached the late Arisekola to help me, but he said he wasn’t in a position to do that. I was passing one house around Challenge/ Bodija, I just felt that I should enter into that compound, it was full of trees, and I didn’t know the occupants. It turned out to be an office and I told the people that I wanted to see the owner of his office, and they ushered me into his office. He said, ‘young man, why did you want to see me’. I introduce myself as an undergraduate student of the UI, and I have a need of money and that I wouldn’t mind to sign an agreement with you and when I finish as a medical doctor, I would pay you back.
He asked: “Why do you choose me? I don’t know you.’ I told him that I didn’t know him too, but I just wanted somebody to help me finish my academic programme. He said, ‘okay, do you have an account with the First Bank in UI?’ I said, no. He asked: ‘How much do you need?’ I said, ‘I needed N100 every month to take care of my education.’ He said: ‘okay’. He gave me N100 to go and open an account with the First Bank, UI branch, and bring the account details. He gave instruction to his bank that every month they should credit N100 into my account, from 1974 to 1980. His name was Mr. Femi Johnson, the insurance man. He was a brother to the late Mobolaji Johnson, first military governor of Lagos State. He was a Yoruba man, he didn’t know me and he paid my school fess through the University of Ibadan for me to become a medical doctor. I will never forget that.
When I graduated, I came to his office and told him that ‘I’m now a doctor’. He gave me N500 and told me to go home and tell your parents that you are now a doctor, and he opened his drawer and brought out the agreement we wrote and tore it into pieces and said that: ‘You don’t owe me anything.’ This is a memorable moment and also a turning point of my life and I will never forget it. Unfortunately, he died barely two years after I graduated, so I didn’t have post graduate experience with him.
More recently was when I went on a 12-and-half hour surgery in the United States and God was with me over the unusual surgery. I thank God I’m talking with the same mouth where the surgery took place. I’m okay and I’m grateful to God. There are many more; those four from childhood to adult age remain very significant.
What have been your lowest points?
It was when I was a Special Assistant to the Minister of Youth and Sports, Chief Jim Nwobodo, I just came back to my room, and I drifted off in the afternoon, and I woke up, and decided that I must travel home, but there was no flight to Port Harcourt. So, I hit the road and in about ten hours I was in Ohafia, and my mother was in a very bad condition. People were asking how I managed to come. I wanted to stay with her, but I took her to the hospital, but unfortunately, my junior doctor, whom I brought to Ohafia, and who was taking care of her told me: ‘Senior, why not go home and rest, you drove all the way from Abuja.’ Maybe, because I’m his senior colleague, he wasn’t feeling too comfortable with my presence. So, I went home and decided to come back by 5.30 the next morning. When I came back, she was sleeping peacefully and when I touched her body, she had passed on.
To me, it was a low moment because I felt having come up all the way from Abuja, I would have felt better she passed on with me holding her. Of course, by hindsight, there are always things you feel you could have done better or set a certain trajectory to achieve certain core objectives you set for yourself. When I left University of Ibadan medical school, my registration number was 9124, which meant that there were not up to 10,000 medical doctors living and dead in Nigeria, as at that time with about 80 million people. There was a ban on professionalism, there was a ban on employment and that was when the slogan of ‘Andrew checking out’ was in the air.
So, as a young medical doctor, you are not being employed, I had to create employment for myself. I had the opportunity of going away to America, but I turned it down. When I created that job, it was called, Kesandu Rural Mobile Medicare (KRUMM Scheme). Kesandu, which you called me when we started the interview, is what people knew me about. I had already set up a successful hospital in Aba, at Ekenna by Okigwe Road. It was one of the prominent hospitals in Aba in the early 80s. This rural mobile hospital scheme should actually have taken off within the environs of Aba, where the headquarters of the hospital was, but I brought it to Ohafia, my community. The issues of logistics may have impacted on it negatively, but I just wanted it to be rural, and I was proud to take this first achievement down home.
However, there were other factors which later were contrary to the mounting of a successful rural medical scheme because it wasn’t a profit-based scheme. Rather I was running it with the money I was making from my hospital in Aba, to see how I can reach the nooks and crannies of the village. It was a very challenging project. I was just in my early 30s when I started the project, I had over five Nigerian doctors and three German doctors in the early age of my practice.
Internal contradictions, unfortunately, could not allow that to prosper, which may not have been the case if such a scheme was domiciled elsewhere. That could be one of the things one could say, ok, maybe, if I were to go round again, I would have taken a different approach. A few other things in that nature; we are always wiser by hindsight.
Who was or were your role model or models while growing up?
My father was my role model in a way; role model from the angle of his determination to confront and contend challenging issues. Even without money, he went ahead to achieve things. He was my role model in the sense that he didn’t look at money as something that was very important. He graduated from Hope Waddel Training Institute about 1917, and went into teaching and rose to become the visiting headmaster of schools in the area. He had a Raleigh bicycle as at then. He left all and went into theology where his earning was about one fifth of what he was earning as a visiting headmaster of schools. Why I say he is my role model is because he didn’t focus on amazing wealth, rather his calling was on focusing and worshipping his creator.
So, it became a point of strength for me and incidentally, he died under my care because as a medical doctor living in Aba, both parents were always coming around. I saw him to the end. His last song was, ‘All other ground is sinking sand, on Christ the solid rock he stands.’ That has been my strength. In any situation, I would just say, ‘all other ground is sinking sand. No matter how negativism and obstructions may have built up, God has always come around to rescue me out. He remains my role model.
At 30, you already had a flourishing hospital with five Nigerians and two expatriate doctors. What informed your dropping the stethoscope for politics?
One evolved into the other. I graduated in 1980 and by 1992, I was already elected to the Federal House of Representatives. Remember, I had a rural medical outfit, which created a certain name currency for me. Like you called me, Kesandu, my name became Kesandu, which wasn’t my name at birth; my name at birth was Chidia Maduekwe. I coined the name, ‘Kesandu’ when I graduated from the UI, and I made up my mind that I was going to practise in the East, and I asked what should be the name of my outfit, I said, Kesandu. Aba is a place where they have a way of getting into nicknames. I didn’t want them to call my hospital, Katanja if there was an issue, they will say, it is troublesome place. I asked myself, what would be the word an Ohafia man used from Kesandu? That was how Kesandu came about.
So, when I came up with the rural mobile scheme, our dear elder brother, Head of State, as we call him in politics, was the one that corrupted the Kesandu Medical Care (KRUMM Scheme), as Kuru mi, Sachami, translated, (carry me and wash me). That project was very popular within the Ohafia and Arochukwu environs. We had satellite clinics all over the place and we were reaching the unreachable. Those whose demographic and geographic potential would not naturally attract an orthodox-based hospital were for the first time having medical facilities coming to them through the KRUMM Scheme.
It now became easy to now run a campaign – Ka’anyi Kesandu (let all of us have a share of life), knowing that what you couldn’t do from the private angle, you can do it by holding political office. Recall that I said that the rural mobile scheme was being funded from my private pocket until the German government came with their support in terms of personnel, and they even told me that see what you are doing, you don’t come from the Ibru family. You needed to come from such a family so that you can deploy the enormous resources they have because what you are doing is what the government is supposed to be doing. If you are in government, it is okay, but not from your private pocket. That was why they supported me.
I felt therefore, going into the government through the National Assembly, I would be in a position to make laws; I would be in a position to provide facilities. I would be in position to amplify what I had already tried doing as a private person.
I saw the platform of politics as a continuation of my medical practice through the other way. Remember that I had already formed my focus on the preventive aspect of healthcare, which is the primary aspect of healthcare. We were taught that prevention is better than cure, and when you tackle healthcare at the preventive level, you don’t have so much need for the secondary, tertiary platforms of medicare. I felt that I would be able to change the narrative of what needs to be done at the primary level. I needed that government platform, and so I went into the House of Representatives, which was short-lived.
As a politician, I became a public officer and a media manager by vocation and so today heading a government agency by virtue of the role I played in the media. It was all in the service of the community. You said that there was no money to continue your education while at the University of Ibadan. This will be surprising, knowing that Rev Maduekwe was very popular, which was associated with wealth. How can you reconcile this?
If you recall at the time I mentioned it, that popularity on wealth was predicated on our elder brother, Chief Okechukwu Maduekwe. At that time, he had an encounter with the government of former General Olusegun Obasanjo (Retd). He was kept in the cooler for 11 months, and his asset worth over one million pounds in the CBN was frozen, and so the family was thrown into turmoil. There was no money. He had over one million pounds with the CBN. Even after he was released he went to court and after many years he had judgement, they still couldn’t pay him. That was the situation. There was nobody at that time; it was only my senior sister, Ola Maduekwe, who had a beer parlour in Lawanson, Lagos that gave me N80. There was no money anywhere.
I told my mother that I wanted to go and join business, and I had an opportunity to work with Fajemirokun (who was the Dangote of Nigeria at that time) in one of his offices in Lagos, but she said, no; you must continue reading medicine and when you become a doctor , you can sell groundnut if you so wished. I told her there was no money, but she insisted that I must read medicine. That was why I started walking the streets of Ibadan; I went to Arisekola, he dismissed me. I continued, and went to Femi Johnson, who didn’t know me. All my brothers, Ojo Maduekwe, Okechukwu Maduekwe came during my graduation to greet him. My father was also there at Johnson’s residence to thank him. It was during that occasion that I first met Prof Wole Soyinka.
You mentioned your elder brother, the late Ojo Maduekwe, a political icon; it is said that both of you don’t usually belong to the same political party. Is it a strategy that head or tail, the Maduekwe family would have a voice in the government? No. That is not true. As a matter of fact, we made history in 1992, when siblings from the same parents in the same party and in the same ward won a national election. We were in the same party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), when I won my election to the Federal House, and he won his election to the Senate. So, to say that we are always in different political camps may not be very correct.
Source: Sun News Online
