Dr. Emeka Iwuagwu was a medical warrior and fought for the life of his people with whatever skill or equipment available to him.
By Victor Iheanacho
In one of my contentious thinking, I once reasoned how worthwhile it would be for every adult at least 50 years and above to send out a notice to all friends, family and acquaintances asking them to write him or her a tribute they would have written if they heard they just passed.
If everyone, including Dr. Emeka Iwuagwu, did, he would have read about too many a tribute people have given him both in words and in writing since his passing on April 2, 2023.
I would have loved Dr. Iwuagwu to hear or read these tributes before he died.
This idea of pre-death tribute would have helped to shape human conduct and reasoning far much better than all the works of preachers of all adopted foreign and native religions the world over.
In the early eighties, I was a young undergraduate studying at the famous University of Nigeria Nsukka. I got extremely ill and needed a quick surgery to remove an infected appendix, a tube-shaped sac at the lower part of human large intestine that has no known function other than to make humans sick when infected and sometimes led to untimely death if mismanaged.
Perhaps one of God’s technical errors in the week of human design.
I was taken to Uchenna Hospital in Umumbiri in Oparanadim Ahiazu Mbaise, my native local government area.
Dr. Emeka Iwuagwu was the young doctor who graduated from University of Ibadan and then boldly decided to establish a hospital in our town and faced its peculiar problems.
There was no electricity, no pipe borne water at that time. The rural population of mere subsistence income were his clients.
My family was not different, we barely managed to feed at that time and by what looked like a family joint financial effort, I proceeded to add more glory to the family name by joining the league of few undergraduates.
The surgery was magical because when I heard I was entering the theater, I was taken to a dark room and to me I was waiting yet to be taken to the theater until Dr. Iwuagwu arrived for the surgery and the surgery started and ended in that small room.
He was a medical warrior and fought for the life of his people with whatever skill or equipment available to him at that time nearly 40 years ago.
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Few days after, I was discharged.
I had no bill.
Indeed, even if I was given a bill I was not sure who was ready in my family at that time to pay my bill.
Dr. Emeka simply asked me to greet my parents and late elder brother and sister Emeka and Chinyere. I paid nothing.
A week later, I came for checkup and Dr. Emeka invited me to his house in Umungara where his parents allowed us their sitting room to have a ball dance for Christmas. While I managed to dance slowly with my surgery cut, he still checked on me from time to time in the middle of the nice groove of the 80’s of the likes of shalama and the whispers.
He gave me several thumbs up as I managed to pull some dance steps typical of good guys from Government College Owerri and Mbaise Secondary School of old.
It was days of glory, fun and niceties.
Later on Dr. Iwuagwu continued his medical practice of care and charity until death came calling on that Sunday morning of April 2.
My Obohia community has never had a loss so devastating as this and we are truly pained.
Good bye Dr. Emeka Iwuagwu, good bye Chukwukadibia 1 na Amano.
- Chief Victor Iheanacho, Igwe Umuedo, ikemba Amano, wrote in from Mbaise