A few things about Emeritus-Professor Aghagbo Nwako
I knew Professor Festus Nwako in the mid seventies as a medical student, in our class, the 1978 set were Ukabiala,who I would say is perhaps the first paediatric surgeon trained from the scratch by Prof, Emma Okafor, Chuka Nwokolo, Gab Njeze,, who made sure no stuff escaped his radar, Bato Amu, Ifeoma Egbuna, Meg Ogujawa and a host of other classmates of ours. We would all scramble for spaces in Prof's ward rounds, the bolder ones and perhaps the ones more confident of themselves would stay in front. Prof would start his questioning with the student nurses, would then progress to the medical students. He expected us the medical students to be more knowledgeable than the student nurses, occasionally, a student nurse would get the question right, and of course the disappointing medical student would be called a goat with two horns. If per chance two medical students failed the same question simultaneously, both being male and female, he would call them "ewu na bo" advising they should get married in ignorance. He told us how unserious we could be, wasting our time in frivolities like greeting him along the corridor and asking him in Ibo "e puta kwa?" 'Of course if I didn't come out you wouldn't have seen me' .He had no time for frivolities.

My next encounter with him was as a resident doctor, and I spent well over 3 years as his senior registrar. Prof was a great teacher, a great mentor that helped swell the population of paediatric surgeons in Nigeria: Dr Goddy Ugbam, Prof Nene Aguguo-Obianyo, Dr Buchy Ukabiala, Dr Roland Osuoji, and Dr Ejike Orji were all his mentees. Prof was very competent and very compassionate, he was not materialistic. I remember one patient we lost when I was on call. I had worked all night and was dog- tired, this patient had had an operation in the abdomen and was not doing well post-operatively, he had had several puncture sites and it was almost impossible to set up a line on this child, the registrar had tried to no avail, as I was resting, the nursing sister on night duty approached me to come and set the drip, I said to her that I needed to rest and that I also had parents, little did I know that the child's father, who was then in the army was eavesdropping. We were doing a ward round some days later, the father of the deceased child accosted us along the corridor and said to Prof 'Prof Dr Osuoji has killed my son'. How smart Prof was, he ordered for a postmortem. The postmortem result came out as multiple organ failure from sepsis. The story did not end there. Three months later, a letter titled ”A CASE OF CALLOUS BRUTALITY”, came from the Divisional Commander copying the Chief Medical Director, copying the Head of Department, copying the Head of our Unit, Prof , asking me to say why I killed the child. I replied and stated the postmortem result, we never heard from them again. The take home message: Prof said to me 'Roland if you had spared a moment to go and even see the child, you wouldn't have received such a letter. That was a lesson in being compassionate.

Dr Roland Iheanyichukwu Osuoji, BMBCH, FMCS, FICS, FWACS
Professor/Consultant Paediatric Surgeon
Head of Paediatric Surgical Unit
Lagos State College of Medicine, Lagos State Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, Lagos