I feel I would be failing the entire community of physicians of Nigerian and indeed African origin world wide if I fail to speak up on the omission of Sir Samuel Manuwa from the list of persons honoured for their contributions to various fields of endeavor in Nigeria’s first 100 years. I don’t know what the criteria were that were used to select people for the list. But looking at the category headlined Pioneering Professionals, and which included Fredrick Rotimi Williams, Akintola Williams Esq; as well as a few other pioneering professionals, I was surprised I did not see Sir Samuel Manuwa’s name on the final list. As to why I believe his inclusion is very appropriate for this Centenary Celebration, I will proceed to explain the reason.
He was the first surgeon in Africa of Native African Origin. He rose from humble roots as the son of a clergyman from Itebu Waterside in present day Ondo State. Born in 1903, after a brilliant scholastic career through the Church Missionary School and Kings College Lagos, he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh Medical School where he qualified as a Doctor in 1926. At the time, the fashion was to get a basic professional qualification in whatever field you studied and return home. Later he trained in the Art of Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Postgraduate training in Medicine overseas is no easy task, even to his day, especially for a man of colour. It involves keeping your focus amidst racial bias, as a trainee apprentice, keeping your ability to smile in the face of unpleasant racial jokes and oftentimes insults.
In 1934 he sat, passed and was called to join the Royal College of Surgeons as a Certified Surgeon and Fellow. With the full authority to carry the letters FRCS (Ed) after his name. He returned to Nigeria and re- joined the Government Health Department of West Africa as a Surgeon in the proper sense of the word. Being African, it was a feat that was unprecedented in the history of colonial Africa. He was sent to work all over Nigeria – East, West and North saving lives and inspiring many young high school students into the medical profession. He even designed a special surgical knife to improve and advance the frontiers of his profession for treating dreaded tropical ulcers. Indeed his professional excellence set a standard for medical care that made it possible for Africans in Nigeria and indeed West Africa to enjoy medical care at the frontiers of medicine as practiced internationally. He operated on tens of thousands of people in the span of his 18-year career as a pioneering surgeon. After 18 years practicing surgery, he could no longer resist administrative responsibilities. He was appointed Deputy Director of Medical Services. Later, he rose to become the first Nigerian Director of Medical Services for West Africa and later became the first Chief Medical Adviser to the Government of Nigeria.
Among other things, in 1952 he saw to it that the entire African Hospital (General Hospital) floors in Lagos, were properly redone in Italian terrazzo just as the colonialists had done in their European Hospital (later named Creek Hospital now Military Hospital Onikan). Prior to that you were lucky if you didn’t catch hook worms from the floor if you didn’t wear shoes as an in-patient, especially in the patient bathrooms. He saw to it that all resources were made available to fight Tuberculosis which was then an African epidemic neglected by the colonialists. Films were made that showed how to prevent and identify tuberculosis in Africans that cinema goers were shown in all cinema theatres in Nigeria before the feature films. Sir Samuel’s support and leadership won Nigeria the fight against tuberculosis in the 50’s and early 60’s. As the leader in the medical community of West Africa, he ensured that meritocracy and excellence became the yardstick for every thing that had to do with the medical practice and profession. It is safe to say that people respected him and held him in very high esteem so much so that her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II honored him with a knighthood in 1956 for his professional excellence and services to West Africa in the field of medicine. Among his accomplishments were the closing down of the Old Yaba Medical College and the setting up of the Ibadan University College Medical School and the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan. UCH was his brainchild and its realization was his handwork.
After a distinguished tenure as a medical administrator, he handed the baton of leadership to capable associates. Seeing that the nation still needed his wealth of unique experience, he was appointed as the first Nigerian Commissioner on the Federal Civil Service by the colonial government. He later humbly served as the deputy chief under Alhaji Sule Katagum after Nigeria became independent, despite being the first Nigerian Commissioner on the commission.
He served as the Pro-chancellor and chairman of the university council of the University of Ibadan for very many years and was a guiding hand in developing UCH to the centre of excellence it became from its inception to what I will refer to as the “Golden era of Nigerian Medicine” in the 60’s and 70’s when members of the Saudi Royal Family came to seek regular specialist care at the University College Hospital on Queen Elizabeth Road.
In July 1975, Nigeria went through a sudden transition. General Yakubu Gowon was removed and Murtala Mohammed became Nigeria’s third head of state. At the time, Sir Manuwa was living in his official residence on Alexander Avenue in Old Ikoyi, a place he had lived since the 1950’s at least, with his devoted wife Lady Bella Manuwa. As the government announced sweeping reforms in the Federal Civil service, “he was retired with immediate effect”. This signaled the beginning of a massive retirement excercise. To worsen the humiliation, he was ordered to vacate his government residence “with immediate effect”. All pleas not to treat this distinguished Nigerian this way fell on deaf ears. For such a distinguished man, the shocking ill-treatment was unprecedented and undeserved, but he complied and moved to a place in Surulere. He fell sick soon after and died of coronary artery disease not unrelated to his humiliating treatment. This was a pioneering professional who was never involved in any financial malfeasance or impropriety of any kind what so ever.
His death instilled a sense of insecurity among the medical community working in the government and university hospitals which exists to this day.
It is just befitting that Sir Manuwa be honoured at this time of Nigeria’s centenary celebration. We saw lists that had his name online, only to find his name was not on the official list to the utter surprise of many people in the medical community. If a special award is given to him, it will be most welcome and it will be on record that a grave injustice done in 1975/76 is being corrected. It will not be the first time for such an occasion, after all, Akintola Williams Esq; the doyen of the accounting profession was knighted for his services as pioneering accountant and philanthrophist responsible for the establishment of the MUSON Centre Onikan Lagos by Queen Elizabeth II. It was only after his international honour as the only Nigerian knighted by the Queen since 1963 that the federal government bestowed on him the appropriate national honour after he had refused to accept a lesser honour from the same federal government. Prof Wole Soyinka was on the “security watch list” of the military authorities when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The military quickly bestowed a national honour on “Kongi” at a special ceremony. Sir Samuel Manuwa deserves no less. He needs to be honoured as part of he centenary celebrations. If his family refuses like Felas family, that is for them to decide. For us physicians in the Nigerian medical community worldwide, he remains the “primus inter pares of Nigerian Medical Doctors”. His accomplishments will never be approached let alone equaled. He brought us to something we need back “the Golden era of Nigerian Medicine”.
•Mabayoje jr M.D, writes from United States
