UNN Professor Launches Foundation in Daughter’s Memory

To ensure the successful take-off of the Chisom Enyinnia Chukwuneke Medical Foundation, the Dean of the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Nigeria, Prof. Felix Chukwuneke, has announced the release of N5 million.

He also appealed to well-meaning individuals and multinational bodies within and outside the country to support the foundation to guarantee its optimum performance.

Chukwuneke, a maxillofacial surgeon, announced this recently while delivering the 186th inaugural lecture of the university, titled ‘Oral and Maxillofacial Surgical Practice in a Developing Economy: the Making of a Surgeon’.

He said the foundation was established to keep the dreams of his late daughter alive.

According to him, two weeks before his late daughter’s mock exam in 2019, she changed her mind from studying software engineering to medicine.

“She decided to read medicine to have the opportunity to treat children from poor parents of their health challenges. My daughter was always very passionate about the survival of children whose parents are poor, those who do not have opportunity of getting the best healthcare like her,” he said. 

Chisom, who emerged as the best in the 2019 WAEC exams of Graceland College, Enugu, was born on August 24, 2003, and died in a South African hospital on October 18, 2020, after a brief illness.

In the lecture, Chukwuneke announced that surgeons of the faculty of dentistry of the institution had developed some local surgical innovations in the absence of the conventional technique to handle patients.

He said that due to the huge success achieved, some developing countries that found themselves in similar situations like Nigeria, have started copying the new model discovered by the faculty.

He also identified a vicious chain reaction of poverty, superstition, ignorance, poor health-seeking behaviours and limited treatment options to patients default to late presentation of their ailment, which has posed more difficulty in finding a cure.

The inaugural lecture of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, which was introduced in 1976 to stimulate research and promote academic excellence among the academia was pioneered by Prof. Ikenna Nzimiro with his lecture titled ‘The Crisis in the Social Sciences, the Nigerian Situation’.

The 186th inaugural lecture attracted the highest crowd in recent times, including the deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Nigeria, Enugu-Campus (UNEC), Prof. Daniel Nwachukwu, who represented the VC; Prof. Charles Igwe and two former provosts of the college of medicine, Prof. Basden Onwubere and Prof. Ernest Onwasigwe as well as former Dean, Faculty of Dentistry, Prof. Oge Linda Okoye.