Nwabunka@70: Odyssey of Good Wine

TRIBUTE

On his 70th birthday Tuesday June 20, Nduka Nwosu pays tribute to a long-standing friendship, a salute to Godwin Chinyere Nwabunka, founder and CEO of Grooming Centre, a Lagos based leading Microfinance Bank.

Godwin Chinyere Nwabunka has a delightful story to tell because nature mixed his chemistry so well. This alchemical titration can be called a wine of many colours. Could that be why his mother Christiana Akpagu Nwabunka named him Chibueke and Chinyere, God’s gift, as an aside?

 Indeed, there have been many a summer morning when mother nature smiled at him. leading him into unique harbours, bestowed with pleasures and joys beyond recognition, prompting stops at “Phoenician trading stations, to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfumes of every kind-as many sensual perfumes,” as he could; this is while wishing he visits many Egyptian cities, (actually Italian cities) to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

I am, at the risk of committing plagiarism, quoting and liking Nwabunka’s Odyssey to C.P. Cavafy’s poem Ithaka, the island enchanted with what in Hausa is called the Sokugo, the wandering spirit Cyprian Ekwensi painted brilliantly through his principal character Mai Sunsaye, in Burning Grass, except that Ithaka is the prompting of the spirit to attain the highest good, the summum bonum of life. 

Nwabunka’s Ithaka manifested early in life. In his yet to be published autobiography, he speaks in glowing and affectionate terms about two people-his parents Gabriel Torty and Christianah Akpagu Nwabunka, probably the most important people, who crafted his journey of life, shaping his cultural, religious, and intellectual zeal as a homo sapiens. 

Did he early in addition to what his parents told him by way of a guide, come across Alexander Pope’s injunction to his disciples to “know then thyself, presume not God to scan, the proper study of mankind is man?” His deep interaction with Catholicism as a teenager and Altar Boy, waking up at five to go for Mass and coming back home to prepare for school, shielded by an elder brother who later joined the Nigerian Army, and two big sisters who doted on him like no other, left the suspicion he was on his way to be christened the Right Reverend Godwin Nwabunka; it may also have left a question mark on what destiny held forth for him. 

His birth on mother earth 70 years ago was a celebration reserved for the last born. Unlike the arrival of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Bethlehem of Judea, there was no local chief or king coming after his head. The three wisemen from the Far East, had no gifts for him, yet he had a warm welcome from mother and father.

The joy upon his arrival was overwhelming and the women of the village of Awomukwu in the Ikwuano Local Government Area in Umuahia, sang a beautiful song for Mama Christiana to welcome the new baby born in the city of Zaria.

 Papa Nwabunka called the young man on baptism Godwin. God has won all his battles and he was signing off the process of calling forth more children with the birth of Godwin. Mama called the new baby Chinyere and Chibueke

So, in effect, Nwabunka’s early beginnings can be traced to Kaduna and Zaria, Zaria in particular, where father and mother were domiciled as a medical attendant and seamstress respectively. He recounts that though both parents were from a humble background, they wished for the best educational exposure and upbringing for their children. From St Theresa’s Primary School Zaria where he had already distinguished himself as a brilliant scholar, his father felt thrilled escorting him to the then famous St John’s College, where he had been admitted for his secondary education. 

That experience was cut short with the crisis in the North leading to the massacre of Easterners. The college authority had to close the institution following threats and intelligence reports of an impending attack. Remember Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu  and Major Christian Anuforo  who were principal actors in the 1966 coup that led to the killing of the Prime Minister Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and the Premier of Northern Nigeria Sir Ahmadu Bello, were old boys of the institution. 

On his return home, he got admitted to Government College Afikpo, another outstanding institution that has produced many great men in the country. 

Unable to get sponsorship for a university education after passing his West African School Certificate examination, he worked with the Nigerian Ports Authority and later proceeded to the Gregorian University in Italy for his studies, obtaining a PhD in Development Economics.

As the days unfolded, it turned out that somewhere along the way, fate had its own admixture in her laboratory, an ingot that urged him on to serve God without the hard precepts of a monk, the monastic life of a celibate. Nwabunka’s mantra all along has been one of service to humanity, which is encapsulated in church, family, friends, relations, and his fellow man.

 As the founder of Grooming Centre, which obviously comes among the top bracket of the leading lights in the microfinance business, and the Nwabunka Foundation, both organisations try to capture the institutional humanitarian activities of the man. Whether as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) of the Grooming Centre or through the Nwabunka Foundation, the welfare of the individual remains a recurring decimal for him, stretching to his involvement in every fabric of nation building and re-building. 

Grooming for example has been active in attending to the needs of displaced people in the Northeast just as it is active providing medicare in the South West, South South and the Southeast for prevention and treatment of various ailments. Education and its advancement through research and rebuilding of existing institutions rank high in its selling point. 

Nwabunka’s educational interests stretch from kindergarten to university. In exploring new territories in the educational sector, he remembers his father’s advice to his children was to attain the highest level possible in their chosen discipline for there lies the silver linen or gold that a good, future life holds for those who dare.

His professor and supervisor of his project, Professor Theodore Mulder, persuaded him to work for the UN, either at UNICEF or the UNDP. There was his Rep Mr. Kingsman Omasola who saw a great future in him just as there were those who saw nothing, but another kind of PhD-a pull him down syndrome. Chief Sonny Odogwu gave the global icon the fun of a lifetime, pulling him away from Isichei and Adetona, where he worked as a consultant after a well-deserved exposure at the Centre for Management Development (CMD). The CMD, UNDP, UNICEF, Odogwu’s SIO Group and Isichei & Adetona, trained and defined his future status as a hardcore professional. 

Mama Christiana and his mother-in-law who gave him a charming woman Isoken Patricia, take the lead among mothers who made a difference in his upward climb. Isoken remains non-pareil as a wife. At the inception of Grooming, she pioneered the new project, leaving behind her lucrative motor parts business to steer Grooming Centre, to a new territory of promise. 

Do not forget Mama Christiana gave her son the name Chibueke-God is the creator, inherited by first son Malcolm. But Chibueke came with a price-that of responsibility and accomplishment. If he ‘strayed’ by Mama’s judgement, he was downgraded to Godwin or just Goddy with her hand on his ear, twisting the fragile object with a probing question mark represented by “Godi-win, could this be you or someone else? Have you forgotten where you are coming from?” Of course, if Mama called Godwin Chibueke, it came with maximum marks. 

When Mama beheld Isoken and gave her tests worthy of a maiden about to be betrothed, tests she passed with excellence, Chibueke acquired an apellation-Nwaomam (my Fineboy and by extension with his Fine Babe). As for the mama from Benin-Mama Isoken, she used her black soup with all the known comestibles-dry fish, prawns, dry meat all embedded in green vegetables, an Afang soup, Edo style, to seal the Holy Matrimony, for better for worse. Mama Isoken, a Pentecostal prayer warrior with Mama Christiana of the Catholic prayer ministry, always interceded on behalf of husband and wife. When they departed, both couples had to learn how to pray their way into God’s heart.

It was his friend Dr. Godwin Ehigiamusoe who first convinced Nwabunka of the medical value of black soup eaten with plantain fou fou. When Papa Gabriel Torty Nwabunka, his wife Christy and Mama Isoken look back at the legacy they left behind, a happy family with four children, Elma Ugochi, Chidinma, Amaka, Chibueke Malcolm, and Uyi, they will be glad to celebrate what a marvelous thing the Lord has done for them. 

Dr. Godwin Ehigiamusoe, the father of the Nigerian microfinance movement, author of TOUCHING LIVES, My LAPO Journey, and founder of Nigeria’s leading microfinance bank-Lift Above Poverty (LAPO), has this to say about Nwabunka: “Many people who come into this business have a wrong mindset and orientation on how it should be. They see it primarily as a money-making venture, an avenue to the good or big life. Dr. Godwin Nwabunka is someone that is sincere and committed to whatever he is doing. There is something that runs through people in this area of business and who are doing it successfully; it is that inherent feeling for ordinary people. Money comes as an active ingredient yes, but the first thing that is common among us, the practitioners in the microfinance sector, is that desire to assist ordinary people; money can therefore follow once this desire comes naturally to you.

Many people who ventured into this territory failed because their overriding quest was largely the pursuit of money. 

That is not the way Nwabunka sees it; I do not see it that way too. That was why our chemistry was easy to click, bringing us together. It made us work together, share ideas together as it were, and it has grown to greater heights even now. Our hypothetical, self-contained plane of existence, or parallel universe, found its convergence in the unfolding world of microfinance, where our worldview found a voice.

“Nwabunka is an extremely focused personality, doing what he should do to drive the business to where it should be headed. I tell those who come to me for advice to   get their focus right on what they want to do, and the rest will be history. Nwabunka is a very hard-working chief executive, who inspires others to action and has so much in him to guide others to success. Success is about diligence; it is about focus, and it is about doing it right.” 

Happy 70th birthday Doc.