Follow Us on Google
• At UNIBEN’s 366th Inaugural Lecture, Prof Odigie reflects on 46 years of surgical excellence, groundbreaking research and the future of healthcare in Nigeria
By Beifoh Osewele
For nearly five decades, Professor Vincent Isibor Odigie has stood where life and death often meet – not on a football pitch, but in the operating theatre.
Delivering the University of Benin’s 366th Inaugural Lecture titled: “A Surgeon’s 46th Year of Surgical Soccering in a Changing Field of Play,” the veteran surgeon transformed what could have been a technical medical discourse into a deeply personal reflection on mentorship, scientific innovation, humility and the urgent need to reform Nigeria’s healthcare system.
Inside the Akin Deko Auditorium that afternoon were members of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) academic community led by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Edoba B. Omoregie, SAN. Also in attendance were persons from far and near, including members of Ukpoke-Uhiele community, Ekpoma, Esan West LGA who had come to give one of their leading light the much needed moral support.
Using football as a metaphor, Odigie likened surgery to a team sport where every successful operation is the result of collective effort rather than individual brilliance.
From architecture to surgery
A Fellow, Medical College of Surgeons (1993), Fellow, West African College of Surgeons (1996), Fellow, International College of Surgeon (1998) and Fellow, American Colleges of Surgeons (2015), Professor Odigie is Nigeria’s foremost endocrine and gastrointestinal surgeons – a professor who has trained generations of doctors, published groundbreaking research and transformed surgical practice.
Yet, none of it was part of the original plan.
As a young man, architecture was his passion. Unknown to him, however, his elder brother—a lecturer in engineering – quietly altered his university admission from Architecture to Medicine.
“As a teenager,” he began, “my dream was to become an architect. I applied to study Architecture. I never thought of Medicine.”
The packed auditorium erupted in surprise.
Yes, you heard him right. Medicine was never part of his original plan.
He didn’t discover the switch until three years later while preparing to enter his clinical studies.
“I looked at my file,” he recalled. “I saw where they crossed out Architecture and wrote Medicine. I went to meet my brother and said, ‘Brother, I saw your writing in my file. You changed my course.’
“He replied, ‘I am already in Engineering. What are you coming there to do? You are a young man. Just go ahead.’
“And I obediently obeyed.”
That unexpected detour produced one of Nigeria’s foremost endocrine and gastrointestinal surgeons and an academic who has spent over two decades as professor of surgery.
That single decision changed not only the course of one young man’s life but also the lives of thousands of patients who would eventually pass through his operating theatre.
“Today, I have no regrets,” Prof. Odigie, who bagged his MBBS at ABU in 1980, said with an air of fulfillment and pride.
A football match called surgery
The title of his inaugural lecture instantly caught attention. “A Surgeon’s 46th Year of Surgical Soccering in a Changing Field of Play.”
It sounded unusual. Perhaps, even playful. But behind the metaphor lay a profound philosophy about medicine.
“In surgery,” Odigie observed, “only the surgeon is generally recognised, which I think is not appropriate.”
He shook his head gently. “Every successful operation has many assists.”
It was a football analogy everyone understood.
Goals are celebrated. The scorer receives the headlines. Yet every goal begins with defenders, midfielders, coaches and teammates whose contributions often go unnoticed.
The operating theatre, he argued, is no different.
Before proceeding any further, Odigie did something many professors rarely do during inaugural lectures.
Hear him: “I dedicate this inaugural lecture to God Almighty, the author and finisher of my faith, who managed my trajectory in life and to all my patients during my sojourn in surgery. I also dedicate it to my siblings, both late and present, my cousins, my classmates, friends, both in northern and southern Nigeria. To my dearest wife, the love of my youth, and my two children, Loretta and George, my daughter-in-law, Prudence, and my three grandchildren, Isibo, Isesele, and Ighodalo. Isibo meaning overcome. Isesele means my prayers have been answered. Ighodalo means I am always forward looking. God bless and keep you all and all that concerns you.”
He added: “The boundless grace of God has been sufficient and will continue to be sufficient on my sojourn as a teacher, a surgeon, a mentor, caregiver for 46 years. I stand in awe therefore and return all praise and glory to God, whom I shall finally return to.”
He added: “The term soccering in surgery was aptly chosen by me and I use it in the present participle and gerund of operating on live patients, unlike in football, where the scorer of a goal and the assist are recognised.”
For Prof. Odigie, surgery had never been a one-man performance. It was always teamwork.
So he honoured those who had walked the journey with him.
“I want to use this opportunity to thank all my colleagues, mentees, nurses, anaesthesiologists, laboratory scientists, medical records personnel, librarians and all those with whom I operated and researched together. God bless you all.”
Prof. Odigie belongs to a generation of Nigerian surgeons trained during a unique period in the country’s medical history.
The Federal Government had established Centres of Excellence to produce specialists capable of serving every corner of Nigeria.
“In 1980,” he explained, “I was trained to become a specialist general surgeon—to play any position in surgery and score goals from any side.”
Unlike today’s highly specialised practice, surgeons of his era handled virtually every major surgical condition. General surgery. Paediatric surgery. Orthopaedics. Trauma. Urology. Neurosurgery.
Whatever arrived in the emergency room became their responsibility.
“We were trained to meet the unmet needs of doctors in Nigeria.”
That experience, he said, shaped his understanding of medicine and prepared him for a career that would eventually span 46 years.
The heart of a lion
As the lecture gathered momentum, Odigie departed from statistics and entered philosophy.
If there was one section every young medical student in the hall was likely to remember, it was this.
“A surgeon,” he declared, “must develop the heart of a lion.” The lion, he explained, never approaches disease timidly. “When the lion picks on any prey, it is to devour that animal.”
Fear, he suggested, has no place in the operating theatre. Yet courage alone is insufficient.
“You should acquire the eyes and wings and dexterity of an eagle.”
Like an eagle soaring above mountains before descending with precision, surgeons must combine vision, patience and extraordinary technical skill.
Then came perhaps the most important lesson of all. “If you can make a patient better,” he intoned quietly, “don’t make him worse.”
The professor urged young doctors to cultivate compassion alongside competence.
“Develop compassion for the sick. Hear their pains. Love them like a woman loves her lover.
“And try to improve their health status.”
He concluded the lesson with another reminder. “Above all, be disciplined. Have the milk of human kindness and the humility and integrity to speak truthfully to your patients, your colleagues, your students and your authorities.”
Debunking dangerous myths
One of the lecture’s strongest public health messages centred on the misconceptions surrounding hernia.
According to Odigie, many Nigerians continue to believe that excessive sexual activity causes hernia. He dismissed the myths with characteristic humour. “Hernia,” he declared, “is not a sexually transmitted disease.”
Then, smiling, he added words that drew laughter across the auditorium: “‘Over-knacking’ or ‘under-knacking’ cannot cause hernia.”
The audience laughed. But the message was serious.
“There are no drugs for treating hernia. The only drug for treating hernia is good surgery.”
Drawing on decades of research, he explained that while increased abdominal pressure had long been considered the principal cause, modern science increasingly points to abnormalities in collagen formation as an important factor.
He also described how the disease has changed over time.
Years ago, patients arrived carrying enormous untreated hernias, sometimes transported in wheelbarrows because they could no longer walk.
Today, advances in surgery—including mesh repair and laparoscopic techniques—have transformed treatment outcomes.
Still, he warned, complications remain deadly when patients delay seeking care.
“The patient starts vomiting.
“He cannot pass stool.
“The intestine loses its blood supply.
“Then the bowel becomes gangrenous.”
The solution, he insisted, is early intervention—not superstition.
If hernia exposed the dangers of medical myths, breast cancer revealed something even more troubling to Professor Odigie.
It was not simply the disease that was killing Nigerian women. It was fear. It was poverty. It was silence. For decades, he watched women arrive at hospital carrying not only tumours but also months—sometimes years—of hesitation. By the time they reached the surgeon’s table, the cancer had often won the race.
“We reviewed over 400 breast tumours,” he told the audience, “and we found that out of 428 breast lumps, 71 per cent were benign. They were not cancerous.”
Then he paused, allowing the statistic to settle.
“So, if you have a lump in your breast, please do not think it is cancer. See a doctor.”
It was one of the simplest yet most powerful public health messages delivered during the lecture.
The tragedy, he explained, is that many women assume every breast lump is cancer, while others assume every lump is harmless. Both assumptions can be fatal.
On one of his presentation slides appeared the image of a young woman wearing a necklace.
Inscribed across it were words that caught everyone’s attention: “I am too defended to be afflicted.”
Professor Odigie disagreed. “Nobody is too defended to be afflicted.”
Cancer does not respect wealth. It does not recognise education. It ignores social status. It visits villages and cities alike. It attacks professors and traders, politicians and market women.
“The only thing,” he insisted, “is to identify it early and get it treated.”
For a nation where breast cancer remains the commonest cancer affecting women, his message could hardly have been more urgent.
The price of arriving too late
Research had taught him one painful lesson: timing determines survival.
His studies showed that women diagnosed early could enjoy five-year and even 10-year survival rates approaching 97 per cent. But the picture changed dramatically once the disease spread.
Among patients who reported late, five-year survival fell to barely one in four.
The numbers were not merely statistics. Each represented a mother. A wife. A daughter. A family forever altered.
Again and again, he returned to the same appeal: “Come early.”
The human side of surgery
Although rich in scientific evidence, the lecture was equally remarkable for its humanity.
Odigie narrated the emotional consequences of mastectomy on African women, describing how loss of a breast can affect marriages, intimacy and family relationships.
He urged healthcare workers to counsel not only patients but also spouses before major cancer surgery.
Yes, Prof. Odigie was not interested only in removing tumours. He also wanted to understand what happened after surgery. His findings surprised many.
Removing a woman’s breast affected far more than her physical appearance. It altered marriages, family relationships, self-esteem and conjugal life.
Following patients over several years, his team documented a disturbing decline in marital intimacy after mastectomy. Some marriages became strained. Others collapsed altogether.
He spoke candidly. “The breast is an organ of duty to a woman. It is an organ of bond between mother and child.”
Then, speaking directly to husbands, he offered advice that blended humour with compassion.
“When you are in your quiet time… don’t only play with the breast. Examine it.”
He urged husbands to support—not abandon—their wives when cancer strikes.
“When the doctor decides that the breast has to be removed,” he pleaded, “the husband should not go outside to get another wife.”
The telephone that changed cancer care
Long before telemedicine became fashionable, Prof. Odigie had already seen the future.
The problem confronting him was simple. Patients disappeared. After a major cancer surgery, many never returned.
Not because they had recovered. Because they could not afford transport, some died quietly at home. Others simply vanished from medical records.
Rather than blame them, Odigie asked a different question. What if the hospital could reach the patient instead?
At a time when only a small percentage of Nigerians owned mobile phones, he began studying whether simple telephone communication could improve cancer follow-up.
His findings were revolutionary. Patients who could not travel could still speak with their doctors, symptoms could be discussed, advice could be given and lives could be monitored.
“I suggested that if you give a cancer patient your phone number,” he recalled, “you can follow that patient effectively.”
The research attracted international attention.
It was presented before the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC), where it was recognised as one of the conference’s most innovative papers.
Its influence extended beyond Africa.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) would later incorporate mobile telephone numbers into standard patient records.
Today, when hospitals routinely record patients’ phone numbers, few remember that the idea once had to be defended with research.
Professor Odigie smiled as he reflected on how far technology has come. “Now, mobile phone number is compulsory.”
Blood in the stool
If there was one warning he wished every Nigerian would remember, it concerned blood in the stool. Too often, he said, people dismiss it as piles. Too often, healthcare providers do the same.
That assumption, he warned, has cost countless lives.
“I studied colorectal cancer for 24 years,” he said. Anybody who comes in with rectal leeding…Put your finger into the rectum. Examine the patient.”
Silence filled the auditorium.
His reasoning was straightforward.
Nearly 70 per cent of rectal cancers can be detected through a simple digital examination.
Failure to perform one could delay diagnosis until cure becomes impossible.
“Never diagnose piles in adults,” he declared, “without doing a digital rectal examination.”
For young doctors in attendance, it was one of those lessons likely never to be forgotten.
The patient who swallowed his secret
Every surgeon carries stories that never leave him. Professor Odigie shared one that sounded almost unbelievable. A young man arrived with years of chest pain. Tests suggested something unusual. Surgery revealed the truth. Buried inside his chest was a denture he swallowed seven years earlier.
When the patient regained consciousness after surgery, the professor showed him the object. He explained that during his bachelor party years earlier he had become intoxicated and accidentally swallowed it.
Embarrassed to tell his fiancée, he secretly replaced the missing teeth and remained silent.
For seven years, doctors treated him for ulcers while the denture slowly eroded through his oesophagus into his lung.
The lesson, Odigie said, was unforgettable.
“If the story does not tally with your clinical sense, handle the patient with caution.”
Sometimes, he reminded his audience, the truth hides where nobody thinks to look.
When errors are made
After nearly five decades in surgery, Professor Vincent Odigie has witnessed miracles.
He has removed tumours that seemed impossible, rescued patients brought to hospital with only minutes to live, and pioneered innovations that changed the way cancer patients are followed up, influenced international practice and advanced surgical knowledge.
Yet, as he stood before the University of Benin community to deliver the 366th Inaugural Lecture, he chose not to dwell only on triumphs. Instead, he confronted one of surgery’s darkest realities – mistakes.
“This,” he said, displaying an image that made many in the audience shift uneasily, “is the only thing you hear in the news.”
A surgical gauze forgotten inside a patient’s abdomen.
“The heavens are moved,” he observed quietly, “when errors are made.”
No surgeon wants to see such a picture.
The condition has a name—gossypiboma—the retention of surgical material inside a patient’s body after an operation.
To the public, it is often seen as proof of negligence. To surgeons, Odigie explained, it is a nightmare.
“A macabre,” he called it.
But rather than cast blame on one individual, he urged a broader understanding of how such tragedies occur.
“It isn’t just the surgeon that should be blamed,” he said. “It is everybody who was involved in the surgery—the surgeon, the nurse, the anaesthetist, the assistant, the attendant. Somebody did not do his own work.”
His point echoed the philosophy with which he began the lecture. If success belongs to the team, failure also belongs to the team.
Throughout the lecture, Professor Odigie demonstrated something increasingly rare in medicine: the willingness to discuss errors openly—not to excuse them, but to prevent them.
He recalled cases of retained instruments, unusual complications, swallowed dentures that remained hidden for years, and diseases masquerading as something entirely different.
Each story carried a lesson. Each reminded young surgeons that medicine is as much about humility as it is about knowledge.
The remark was directed at young doctors, but its wisdom extends beyond medicine. Facts matter. Observation matters. And listening matters too.
Changing face of disease
One of the lecture’s recurring themes was that surgery today is not the surgery of yesterday.
Diseases evolve. Patients change. Medical knowledge advances.
Conditions once considered rare have become increasingly common, while others have revealed entirely new causes. He described how gastrointestinal perforations, once blamed almost exclusively on peptic ulcer disease, are now frequently linked to the indiscriminate use of painkillers such as Feldin, Cataflam and Indocid.
Many Nigerians, he noted, self-medicate for body pains without appreciating the devastating consequences.
“They take the drugs for relief,” he explained, “but by morning, they may have perforated their bowel.” It was another warning rooted in decades of clinical observation.
Innovation born from necessity
One of the most fascinating moments of the lecture came when Odigie described a problem few outside surgery ever consider.
Patients who lose the anus to colorectal cancer require a colostomy—a surgical opening through which waste leaves the body.
Imported colostomy bags were available, but they were designed for lifestyles very different from those of many African patients.
“They cannot hold the African stool,” he said with characteristic candour, provoking laughter.
Rather than accept the limitation, his team designed an indigenous alternative—the Zaria Kolobelta Bag—an innovation tailored to local realities and later recognised among notable inventions in Nigerian universities.
It was a reminder that medical innovation is not always about expensive technology.
Sometimes it begins with understanding the everyday realities of patients.
Healthcare beyond the hospital
As the lecture drew to a close, Odigie shifted from surgery to public policy.
His concern was unmistakable. Too many Nigerians, he argued, die not because treatment does not exist, but because they cannot afford it.
“Late presentation,” he said, “is not as a result of ignorance. It is as a result of poverty.”
Those words hung heavily in the hall.
For years, health experts have repeated the same warning: millions of Nigerians delay seeking care because of financial hardship. Professor Odigie believes the country must confront that reality boldly.
A call for healthcare reform
Beyond surgery, Odigie used the inaugural lecture to advocate bold reforms. He called for universal health insurance, proposing innovative funding mechanisms that would spread healthcare costs across society rather than leaving families to shoulder catastrophic medical bills alone. He also envisioned technology-driven emergency care.
Just as Nigerians can summon a ride through digital platforms, he suggested, they should be able to request an ambulance instantly.
“A sick patient should be able to call an Uber ambulance,” he said, “and the National Health Insurance Scheme should pay.”
The idea drew smiles, but behind it lay a serious proposition: healthcare must become faster, more accessible and more responsive.
Varsities that make medicines
Another proposal reflected his long-standing commitment to self-reliance. Nigeria’s universities, he argued, should move beyond producing pharmacists alone. They should manufacture essential medicines.
“There should be a drug manufacturing unit in every university,” he recommended.
Perhaps, the most enduring lesson came from the football metaphor that framed his address. For 46 years, he has described himself as a man “soccering” through surgery. But unlike football, where victories are measured in goals scored, surgery measures success differently:
A child who returns home healthy; mother who survives cancer, a patient who walks again, a family granted more time together. Those are the goals that matter.
