DR. STELLA CHIJIOKE did a jig when she retired from her top flight job at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) last year. Celebrating 60, she danced like she had never done before. Many at the occasion could not help wondering why she was in such an ecstatic mood, but no one was in doubt as to the fact that she had been blessed with a privileged life. Born to a father who had a master’s degree in Education from the Edinburgh University at a time that one could count the cars on Nigerian roads on one’s finger tips, Stella studied Medicine at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. A year later, she stepped into the NNPC and rose through the ranks to the top.
But the charming Abuja-based health/wellness consultant would never forget the pains of the Bellview plane crash that took her husband’s life, as well as others that made her to retire into caring for people and touching lives.
“I used to be an active young girl,” she said, reliving her growing up days. “I was an athlete and I represented my schools. I come from a disciplined family, because my parents were primarily teachers. As you would know, the teachers of old were really strict. But if I were not brought up by the type of parents that I had, I am not sure that I would be where I am today.
“I have seen contemporaries who had it easy when we were young. I actually used to envy them in those days. But today, I thank God because there is no basis for comparison. I was really lucky that God planted me in my parent’s family.”
“My father retired as a Zonal Education Inspector in Imo State. My mom was originally a school mistress. She then went through more courses in the University of Nigeria, Usukka, using the proximity of the university and ending up as an Administrative Officer there.
“When my father retired, we had to move from Nsukka to Imo State. It was the period when Chief Sam Mbakwe was the governor. So, my mother worked in the office of the governor until she also retired.”
Stella Chijioke’s memory of childhood was that of mixed feeling. “Like I said, I used to envy some of my mates then, because they were free. They could go anywhere. Whenever they came to visit me at home, I was always busy doing one thing or another. I was not allowed the frivolity of moving around visiting people. My father would ask you what is happening there that you want to see. He would ask you next about your home work. As a teacher, he drilled the six of us and today we are the better for it.”
So what did that teach the young Stella?
“That taught me that you don’t take life for granted; that it is what you sow that you reap. That if you really prepare for life and you have good help, that is, someone or people who lead you in the right path, there is no way your life will not be good, even more that you imagine. With the help of God, any little effort you make yields good result. So, hard work pays. That is the summary of what my early years taught me.
“And in life, you must have integrity. You may get away with some bad things, but someday, the real you will show up and people who didn’t figure out who you are will find out. But a clean transparent life is better any day.”
With parents who were constantly on the move, Stella’s education started in Government School, Uyo, where her father was the principal of the Government Teachers Training College.
“That is the school that was later turned into the University of Uyo. From there, we came on transfer to Nsukka,” she said.
On a scholarship from the government of Eastern Nigeria, Stella left for Rivers State, to an elite missionary school in those days.
“I later gained admission into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka to study Medicine and was also privileged to gain scholarship. I had my post graduate degree at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in Occupation and Environmental Medicine under the umbrella of the NNPC. After I graduated for my first degree in 1978, the youth service year followed. Then I got a job at NNPC. But the employment actually came one year later.
I had spent that year working at the Port Harcourt Nursing Home. The irony of it all is that when the job came, we didn’t know it was a privileged job,” she said.
Stella is proud to have moved around Nigeria. “I used to speak Ibibio,” she said proudly. “Of course, there is nothing a person from Nsukka would say that I would not understand. So, I was able to speak some more languages. I did one year housemanship at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital in Lagos too before my youth service year in Rivers State.”
For Stella, Rivers State remains a place she would not forget in a hurry. That was where she met her husband; the man who turned out to be everything to her. And even after he died in the ill fated Bellview plane crash on October 22, 2005, Stella refused to let go of his memory.
It is many years ago, but her voice still betrays emotion when she talks about it.
She said: “Rivers State was where I met my husband and that was where I got my NNPC job. Even when my husband got a transfer to Lagos for two years, we were still living in Port Harcourt where I had all my children. And that was because I was working at the refinery, the Eleme Petro-chemical, the town clinic which was called the zonal headquarters.
“I was rising along the line. Before long, I was made Manager, Medical Services and posted to Benin to head the zone before I was later appointed a General Manager (Occupation and Environmental Health Dept) and transferred to Abuja. That was the position I retired from.”
“Though I lost my mum, the loss of my husband in the Bellview plane crash was a turning point for me! It was too much for me. I went into menopause by shock. It just stopped, till today, it has not flowed!”
“My husband was a petroleum engineer. He was working with Elf Petroleum, which is now called Total Nigeria Limited. He was one of the general managers. He was actually coming from Port Harcourt. He was an avid golfer. He had gone there for an occasion held by the golf club. He was supposed to have come back with Sosoliso or Chanchangi, which had Abuja-Port Harcourt flights then. Bur because he was a golfer, he said Port Harcourt golf club was having an event, so he went.
“After 4 pm, he called to say he was still coming to Abuja. I told him that he must have missed the two direct flights. He replied that there would be a flight in Lagos to Abuja. He assured me that he would catch a flight to Abuja that evening from Lagos; that there was a Bellview flight for 7.45 pm, which he could catch that night. And he did.”
Recalling her late husband’s last moments, she said: “My husband had bought books for my daughter who came from Ghana where she was studying Medicine at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. They had just finished one of the crucial examinations in Medical School. After that, they were to go into the clinical year.
“She had sent a list of the books she needed and Daddy had said he would buy them. I had asked her how she was going to get them, and she told me that her dad could send them to her in Ghana by courier. So I asked him about the books and he said he would bring them to Abuja. That was when I told him that he had missed the two flights and he told me that he would get a flight from Lagos.
“When he got to Lagos, he called me to tell me. And when he boarded too, he called. When we spoke on the phone, he asked what I was doing and I told him I was cooking soup. He asked what soup and I told him okro. He asked me to make it green as usual. He told me to freeze it so that he could take it with him on Monday morning when he would be going back. That was our normal routine anyway.”
“He also told me to send the driver to the airport. It was the driver who called from the airport and told us to on the television. I asked why and asked asked if the plane had landed. He insisted that I switch on the television.
“I told my daughter what the driver had said, so she said we should on the television. When we did, we saw breaking news on the screen and then the voice came that the Bellview plane was missing. I was dazed. I got up, sat down, got up, sat down.
“I again called the driver to tell me what was happening at the airport. He told me that they had been called to the tarmac. What followed was the longest 20 minutes of my life, as I waited for him to call me. He didn’t call me after that time. I had to call him again.
“By the time I called him, he was crying. By this time, the scrolling bar on the television screen was already updating us regarding the news about the missing plane. Sooner, the information came that the Bellview plane got missing from the radar seven minutes after take-off and all efforts to locate it had proved abortive. For me, it was the beginning of the end.”
“I stuck to myself. The kind of work that I was doing also encouraged me to become a recluse. After my husband died, I went into depression. I lost interest in life. I was asking myself why I was still here. Okay the children are here and I have a job to keep, I kept reminding myself.
“I lost interest in people. I was not going to parties or any other social event. My routine became from my desk at work, to the house and then to the church. I was such a triangular person. I had no extra activity. I didn’t have anyone who came around to visit! I was not going out to see anyone too.
“Half of the time when I was alone in the office, I had tears as my companion. I was locked up all to myself. I had only myself to share my pains with. I was not even going to the market. I did not really want to see anybody. I was only seeing the patients who I had to see officially. And that routine is not good for anybody. It was not good for me too.
My level of activity dropped tremendously. When my husband was alive, we used to socialise a lot. We were good dancers. But all that stopped.”
As if that was not enough bad news, Stella Chijioke became challenged healthwise. And it was not the kind commonly heard of. “What happened was that my spinal cord collapsed! I had to be evacuated in 2008 from this country to India. My spine had to be operated upon and re-done. Right now, there are so many things that I cannot do.”
But what could have led to this unusual kind of health challenge?.
“That is why I am preaching that people should rectify their lifestyles. What led to it is what I am today preaching against as a wellness consultant. We should not take our good health for granted. What happened was that the level of my normal activity went down. From being an active girl, an athlete representing institutions, I was suddenly sitting behind the desk to work for years?
“Also, I went through four quick pregnancies. I delivered four children within three years and five months. My mum shouted when I had the fourth one. She told me, ‘you are a doctor, why are you doing this to yourself?’ I told her that was how the children came. She said, ‘I don’t expect you to say that. It is not how it should be done. You will pay for it.’ Eventually, I paid for it.”
“After each pregnancy, the hormones did not go down before I took in again. I was building up hormones again for another pregnancy. So I was returning from each maternity leave, with a new pregnancy. I did that four times. One baby is like ten months older than the next one. And it was unbelievable, but it happened.
In later years, I met people who knew us in Port Harcourt, who asked me if the children survived. I told them that they all survived. Many of them said they survived because I am a doctor. But my abdominal muscles got weaker and weaker.”
“My abdominal muscles got weak and they are the things that support the spine. They had been stretched beyond the elastic limit. When my second daughter was going for her master’s programme in Birmingham in the UK, I think I dragged some of the heavy boxes. That was when my spinal cord snapped.
“I didn’t even feel it that day. It was after I had come back. I stayed two days with her in London, went again with her to Birmingham and stayed another two days. Those days were days of dragging boxes up and down. That happened between September and October.
“When I got back, by December, the pain came. That was when I did an MIR, which was when it was seen to have collapsed. I had to travel to the East for a wedding. Sitting through that long journey started the pain. I was evacuated to India where I had a major operation. Now I am not allowed to take a flight longer than two hours, and I must be lying down.”
If Dr. Stella Chijioke thought that those two episodes were enough, the icing on the cake was just ahead.
She said: “Six weeks after I came back from my spinal cord operation in India, I was kidnapped from my father’s house in Imo State. I was with my younger sister. We went for my mum’s memorial service. I had become all of a sudden a kidnap victim. The ransom was an outrageous amount.
“My driver managed to call my colleagues at work to alert them on what had happened. It was a sad time for my organisation and they did not take it lightly. The management immediately went into a rescue plan with the Federal Government in an operation which involved the highest security network in the country as at then.”
“After few days, we were traced to a location between the borders of Akwa Ibom and Abia State, in an uncompleted building. I later heard that the Federal Government gave only two options. And that was, ‘find her or find her!’
By Saturday of that same week, the government task force had already penetrated the village where we were located. The kidnappers were guarding the house where we were kept. There were no windows. There was a roof but not completely done. It was at the fringe of a forest. The village itself was not developed. You can only go in there through a track. By the second day, they threw in bread and two bags of pure water to us. We hurriedly gobbled it because we were hungry. That was Thursday morning.”
“By Monday, the government task force under disguise had zeroed down to where we were held captive, through information networking. By Tuesday morning, we were rescued after a shoot-out. After that, I had to leave the country for a while. It was a nasty experience that made me to fear for this country.
“As to whether they got money from us, they couldn’t get any ransom. But they took some money which was with us when they kidnapped us from the house. That day, they were shooting everywhere.
“Abroad, I had to go and see a psychotherapist. He took me to those that handled the prisoners of war for America. When two of them saw me, they asked, ‘Madam, how did you survive mentally?’ I answered that I did not know. They said, ‘your husband died suddenly, your children are not with you. All of them are in school. You just got through a major surgery, and then a kidnap trauma. Did you see a psychotherapist when each of these happened?’ I said no.
“Then they said, ‘after all these, you are still mentally balanced. You are defying the textbooks!’ They said that this kind of thing does not happen to an individual all at once or one after the other; that one or two of them is enough to derail any human being. So they asked me why I did not see a psychotherapist and I told them that in Nigeria, we do not see a psychotherapist; we either have the everyday doctors or psychiatrists. So, if the everyday doctors can’t handle your case, you end up in the asylum. So they laughed and said that I even still had a sense of humour. Well, I told them that I didn’t mean it as humour, but that it is the truth.’
So, when Stella retired, she had already made up her mind on what she would do. “Though initially I wondered what I would do at retirement, I knew that I did not want to set up a full clinic. I didn’t have the time for that. I knew it would entail a lot. Setting up a full clinic would mean being there 24 hours for the patients, and at 60, with my health challenges, I knew I shouldn’t do it. I know that there is no need biting more than I can chew.
“Most of the clinics in Abuja are owned by people who are younger, in practice and in age, so I wouldn’t want to be competing with them. What prompted me into caring for people’s wellness was also because I had aged parents. I believed that charity should begin at home.”
So, Stella Chijioke put together Ultimate Wellness Ltd, an outfit that creates awareness, guides and cares for members of the public, advising them on how to spend money when they are not ill.
“We are not treating people when they are ill per se. We want to let you know the vital information that where you live, what you eat and what you do contribute a lot to the disease, sickness or illness that you have now or would have later in life. We are not your primary physician but we tell you that there are things you must do to change the pattern of things around you, that will make you healthy, and this is doable.
“I take people through a wellness plan. Everybody can be managed better, notwithstanding the illness such as diabetes, hypertension, stroke, obesity and so on. Somebody can still have a fulfilling life despite having all these sickness. For instance, acute diabetes can be reversed and the blood sugar brought down and lifestyle changed. This has been proven.”
To prove it further, Dr. Chijioke sets a good example of a healthy lifestyle. “In time past, I did not use to take breakfast. I thought that was a good way of managing my weight. But now, I know that it is not the best way. I got to know at NNPC when I was putting this together. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If there is any meal not to be missed, it is breakfast.
“The actual meal to be missed for me is dinner. When you eat heavy meal and carry it to bed, that is when the body does all the storing, which you don’t need. I have late lunch at 4pm or 5pm. It you are between the age of 45 and 60, you have to reduce the quantity of your food intake. You eat smaller quantities of food. Don’t overload food in your tummy.
“I drink lots of water. As women, we are all expected to have eight to ten glasses of water every day. For men, it is ten glasses of water every day. That is the minimum. In hot Africa, we are expected to drink even more because we are always expending. Water helps us to detoxify from the environmental, natural toxins and even those we get from food and drinks.
“For drinks, I take fresh fruits which must not be stored in the refrigerator for long. For exercise, which is very important, I get it from dancing. These days, I do that in the church. People do not know why I dance that much in church, but the truth is, it is a form of exercise for me. It is a form of activity, which my body needs so much. Of course, I also dance in church to glorify God.
“Now I am involved. I am beginning to go out, to socialise. I used to be a dancer. My husband and I attended parties together a lot. And any party we went, we were the life of the party. We used to do floor ‘dance’ shows at parties, with people surrounding us and clapping.
“I have been to parties lately. Even at wedding these days, I have started dancing again. Right now, I cannot go to night parties because I don’t have a companion. But I have resumed my dancing.”
As a woman who has gone through these life traumas, what is her advice to people who may be facing challenges? “My answer is that they must have faith in God who makes the difference. You have to have God as pillar to hold you at such times when all fails. Hold on to Him, because He is already holding unto you.”
