By Rita Ugo
Nigerian-born US-based medical practitioner, Dr. Emeka Boris Oji, has again donated international medical journals and books to his alma mater the Abia State University (ABSU), Uturu.
Dr. Oji, a practicing physician and the immediate past International President of Zenith Environmental and Social Protection Network (ZESPRONET) – an association of alumni of ABSU) – has been donating professional, mostly subscription books and journals to the university since 2010.
The priceless collection, this time, was received on behalf of the university by Professor Stephen .N. Onwere, Provost of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at ABSU.
Earlier, Dr. Oji had led his fellow alumni to prosecute multi-million Naira projects for the institution, including the construction and donation of a state-of the art postgraduate hall of residence and provision of solar lights throughout the college campus under the “operation light up ABSU” by the North America Alumni).
Oji said he started donating these otherwise hard-to-get journals and books to the institution after an encounter with Professor E. U. Ikonne, the then Dean of the College of Medicine.
According to him, he asked Ikonne, a professor of Optometry (the course he studied at ABSU), how he could support the institution and was told that they were having difficulties enrolling in virtual libraries or in paying subscription for international journals due to scarce resources and exchange rate issues.
Oji then promised he would subscribe to as many organizations and professional institutions as possible and request hard copies of their journals to be sent to the university to enable staff and students have access to evidence based/research backed studies, so that they can be up-to-date with current developments in their fields of study.
Since 2010, he has continued to keep to his promise. He did it throughout the tenure of Prof. Ikonne, who went on to become ABSU Vice Chancellor, and continued during the tenure of Prof. Onyemachi Maxwell Ogbulu as VC, and is continuing with the current Vice Chancellor, Professor Ndukwe J. Okeudo.
At an average cost of between $5,000 and $8,000 per shipment, Dr. Oji has continued, year after year, to contribute substantially to the manpower development in the institution, which can now compete favorably with their contemporaries globally.
However, Oji said what he has been doing thus far amount to a drop of water in the ocean compared to what needs to be done for ABSU and other such institutions of higher learning in the South East zone, Nigeria as a whole, and indeed in Africa. He hopes that his gesture would spur other people who are similarly privileged to also lend a helping hand.
“It’s been a labour of love that is just scratching the surface but I know that what I am doing is important in the education of medical students and staff,” he stressed, insisting that “you never can tell who it will spur into action. Nothing is too big or small to give to public schools, especially in Nigeria.”