Dr. Jide Akeredolu, a consultant surgeon, as the District Governor of Rotary Club 9110, has a huge task on his desk to meet humanitarian. It’s a busy year with little or no time for parties. But Dr. Akeredolu, a member of Island Club, has a way out. In this interview with PAUL UKPABIO and BIODUN ADEYEWA, he shares with us many interesting things about his life and career, including how he found himself in Rwanda immediately after the war, among other issues.
Would you say that your early life influenced the person you are today?
I had a father who was an Anglican Bishop. So, more or less, we garew up inside the church. He was a strict disciplinarian. We were taught early the value of giving service to the community and society. We were taught the value of giving, which has helped me a lot to key into the service that Rotary offers and gives a much larger platform. What took your parents to the North?
At that time, Christianity was not well established in the North. So, the church needed someone who could go there to spread the gospel as it were. That was in the 50s; that was how my dad was chosen. My dad was the priest at St. John’s Church in Araloya, Lagos Island. He was transferred to Kaduna where we were for seven years. He built the Anglican Church in the North before he returned to the South. So, we were there mainly because of his pastoral duties.
Briefly, you were in Lagos?
Yes, but we were small then; so it will be difficult to remember in totality all that took place then. It’s a different experience after I had gone round the world and returned to settle down here again. Lagos of those days was a completely different thing. The compounds were decorated with flowers, not walls. The water in the gutters flowed. I remember that we used to make paper boats and put them in the gutter, and watched them float from where we lived on the Island down to the Lagoon. It was as easy as that. But now the gutters don’t flow to anywhere; they are just there clogged. They are static. Walls are now built around houses with more blocks increasing the heights of the walls. After that, they add barb wires, slowly building prisons for ourselves and locking ourselves inside. Well, some people call it progress.
Who would you say influenced your personality most?
That definitely is my dad. He was principled and non-compromising. As a priest in those days, you didn’t have a lot of money, but you were highly respected in the community. I remember that I was in primary school when I was queried: ‘Who did this?’ And all I did was to reply that ‘can you imagine me doing that? I am a son of a pastor!’ And that was it, because that was how I grew up. Being the son of a pastor in those days was an elitist thing. Looking back to those days, I recall that I was going to school without shoes but I was still proud and I usually recalled the saying: ‘Remember the son of whom you are’, which was commonly said to us in those days. Principles took me through life and completely made me self-reliant. Even though he was a pastor in the North, he was not a superstitious person.
Why do you say that?
I remember when I was in secondary school, I was very bright then; I am not as bright now as I used to be (laughs). People even used to think then that I was using ‘juju'(charm)to pass my exams because I was usually busy playing football, table tennis and other sports and when examinations came around, I was always the first in class. And there was a time I was sleeping on my bed and something was touching my body, I jumped up and saw a charm what Yorubas call ‘tira’ right there on my bed. Everybody was running and screaming. I took it home and when I showed it to my dad, he told me to throw it away, that I should not believe in such things. I was taken aback but he instilled that belief in me that nothing can touch or harm me as a son of God. That, it is the people that put it there on my bed that have the problem. Since then, I have never nurtured any fear whatsoever. I am always focused believing in whatever I am doing.
You just gave us a picture of Lagos back then; can you also give us a picture of Kaduna in those days?
Kaduna was a different ball game because we were in a place which could be likened to Ikoyi there. It was an elitist place; we didn’t mix that much because we were surrounded by Muslims and we were just a small Christian community. I don’t speak Hausa and that should go a long way to show you that we didn’t interact much, but I understand the language when it is spoken. The school was next to the church and we lived in the church environment. It was rough with us at that time; I was selling newspapers on the road as a school boy then because we didn’t have money. Priests in those days were very pious. When I look back at how humble my background was, I used to shake my head because we used to remove the table in our home and put it outside so that we could have space to sleep at night in the sitting room. But I thank God that I was able to make something out of my life with such a humble beginning.
But what decided it for to study medicine?
The sincere truth is that I had a senior brother who came in from England and had done medicine. I wanted to be an engineer but when he came in 1971, I found out that new graduates were earning 60 pounds and doctors were earning 120 pounds. That was when I changed my mind because I didn’t see any reason in going to study something that will make me earn less when I could as well study medicine that will make me earn higher. He was in the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, and he bought a car. I said to myself that it was the way to go. That was what twisted my choice from engineering to medicine. But even then, when it was time for me to enter the university, I filled engineering for some of the universities and medicine for others. I was able to get admission for both courses but I settled for medicine.
In those days, there was no JAMB; you applied to each of the universities directly. I decided to opt for medicine in the University of Ibadan, which had a federal scholarship attached to it, unlike the others. I don’t know if I would have been able to go to school if I had not got that scholarship because, like I said, my parents were poor. My senior brother lost one year because he got admission into the university, but my father could not pay. So, he was told to stay at home for a year before my father could afford it. So, when I was coming behind him, I already knew what to expect. But when a federal scholarship was attached to my admission, it became a God-sent opportunity. The rest is history.
Was that when you stopped selling newspapers on the street?
Oh yes. In Kaduna, my mom was into distributing the newspapers. She was selling anything. She put the newspapers on our heads to sell in the morning before we went to school and when we were back from school in the afternoon, we would be selling fruits. It was a tough upbringing.
At what point did marriage come in?
That was after housemanship. I did the youth service in the eastern part of Nigeria; came back, worked in the military for two years, started my post-graduate training at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital(LUTH), finished as a surgeon, then travelled abroad, where I stayed for four years before returning to Nigeria. That was when I met my wife. She was a dentist, working at a dental centre. That was how we got hooked up. She is from Ondo too.
You were abroad, free and single; did it occur to you then that you could marry a white lady as it was the vogue then among young Nigerians who travelled abroad?
As a young man, yes, I thought of that. I remember when I was a registrar and earning a salary, I was quite buoyant and there was that temptation to marry a white lady. But I knew that my mother would put her feet down and say never, never! More so as we would have to come back home at some point. Presently I can say that I thank God that I didn’t do that because such marriages also have their own challenges. But then again, maybe I should have married a white lady, which also meant that I probably would have just stayed back there and not returned to Nigeria. This country is so rough now that sometimes that idea crosses the mind and you start wondering whether you should have done it all differently. But we also thank God for how it has turned out presently.
Were there opportunities for you out there? If there were, what made you return to Nigeria?
What happened was that I went there to specialise in plastic surgery, which is a sub-specialty of surgery. In the English society, you get to know once in a while that you don’t belong. And when that message gets across to you, no matter how good you are, you really don’t belong. And I can remember that I didn’t like that. They knew that I was good, but people were supposedly above me that I was teaching how to do some operations but yet they were my bosses! They let you know that you can’t go beyond a particular point. So, I thought I didn’t need to be a second class citizen. I felt I needed to be in control of my world. I saw the opportunity to join the University of Lagos as a lecturer. That was why I came back home. Unfortunately when I returned, because of the politics there, I couldn’t get the job. Instead, I got a job as a consultant surgeon in the Lagos State Health Service. I worked there for a few years. The system in Lagos state then allowed that I got transferred from the General Hospital on Lagos Island to the General Hospital at Gbagada after a year and half, where I stayed for a few months and got transferred to the General Hospital at Epe. I spent two years there before being moved to Gbagada again. It was when I was transferred again to Isolo that I said no, that it was time to start a private practice.
So, you went into full-time business as a plastic surgeon. Can you explain what plastic surgery is?
Plastic surgery is that aspect of surgery where you deal with visible abnormalities in people; either they are born with those abnormalities or people who along the line of their lives become disfigured. You probably would have seen people with cleft lips, various abnormalities with their skin, or people who are damaged due to involvement in a road accident, where they probably sustained terrible injuries that dis figured them. That’s our specialty as we make them return to looking fine. Also, there are people who just feel like improving what they look like: People who want face lift or ladies who want their tummies to be as flat as possible. But these areas are just a small part of plastic surgery itself. Again, there are people who are suffering from skin cancer and other kinds of cancer.
Which of your surgeries would you say was your best or your worse?
I have had all sorts of experiences. However, I have never found surgery difficult in any way, I just flow into it. And the best experience I have ever had was when I was selected as part of a Rotary Plastic Surgery mission to Rwanda in 2013 to go and perform surgery to those who have been deformed during the Rwandan genocide. A lot of people were maimed and disfigured and stuck in their house. They couldn’t come out because they looked terrible and scary. Some actually looked like monsters. They gathered all of them together and plastic surgeons all over the world were selected to attend to them. I was the only one from Africa that was selected on the team. We were there for a month, operating on them from morning till night. It was a rewarding experience to see people who were hiding and couldn’t face the world but suddenly were healed and they came out looking lovely with smiles to face the world.
Were there other challenges?
We always have challenges like that when you do surgeries, especially when I was in Britain. There was that expectation that I needed to do better than my colleagues to even be recognised. I was under that pressure that you must not fail. I was under such pressure. There were times that I had to do 12 to 16 hours of surgery and one had to be as meticulous as possible. Those were challenging times. Nonetheless, I have never had any case that I had to regret. The circumstance for plastic surgery in Nigeria is a lot more different from that which obtains abroad. Over there, the facilities are there; the back-up systems are there; but here, you are almost literally working with nothing but you still need to produce good results.
With your task of being a District Governor of Rotary Club, do you have time to unwind?
For this year, I don’t think there is time to unwind like that because being a Rotary Club District Governor is a 24 -hour work. But I am also a member of Island Club, which allows me to unwind a bit from time to time. In addition, whenever I find time, I still play lawn tennis and I do a lot reading because many people do not know that we keep exercising the body but the brain is also an organ which needs exercise. And if you don’t exercise it, the brain can wither away.
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