Good night, Dr. Ben Ohiaeri

ABOUT two years ago, I received a referral to meet Dr. Benjamin Nnamdi Ohiaeri, a renowned obstetrician and gynaecologist. He was the founder and Chief Medical Director of First Consultants Medical Centre, located in Obalende, Lagos. It is a stone’s throw from the famous St. Gregory’s College and a trekking distance from the erstwhile Nigerian seat of power, Dodan Barracks. Ohiaeri, who hailed from Isu, Imo State, oversaw specialties like obstetrics, pediatrics and general surgery and was the boss of the famous Dr. Stella Adadevoh, who was martyred in the 2014 Ebola scourge mix.  

The referral did not have me as Ohiaeri’s patient. Instead, the famous physician was to be my patient. I was to use my pen to tell his exciting life story in the form of a biography. 

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Ohiaeri’s First Consultants, which he founded from the scratch in 1982, had huge name recognition and worldwide attention. It was where Nigeria’s first Ebola outbreak sparked from. You remember the story? In 2014, Liberian Patrick Sawyer had been taken to the hospital after he became ill upon arrival in Lagos. He passed on from complications of the virus on July 24.

So, we met. Ohiaeri, then about 80 years old, was visibly ill and frail but carried within him a huge humanity. As a newshound, Ohiaeri’s fame hit me. It was a rehash of Jamaican Bob Marley’s Trenchtown Rock track — “one good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain”. The background story I pieced together were pieces for a blockbuster — Ohiaeri midwifed Mrs. Maryam Babangida’s daughter, Halima and Buba Marwa’s daughter; was close friends with Babangida, Sani Abacha and MKO Abiola. I was excited to be engrafted into this exciting narrative.

In deep, no-holds-barred sessions, Ohiaeri told me his story. I became the doctor to whom he must tell it all. Though acutely weighed down by his ailment, the sessions were concluded. He switched between very deep understanding of Yoruba and English to tell his personal and First Consultants’ stories, as well as his relationship with the big guns of the time.

It was thus an unbearable pain when I was told a few days ago that he had passed. May the soul of Dr. Benjamin Ohiaeri find encore in the bosom of his Creator.