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• How Prof. Odigie deplored folklore to deliver life-saving medical lesson
By Beifoh Osewele
There was laughter in the capacity-filled Akin Deko Auditorium of the University of Benin (UNIBEN). It began as a ripple before swelling into a roar that threatened to lift the roof off the hall.
The image was unforgettable. Anus, the least celebrated and perhaps the most ignored part of the human anatomy, had gone on strike.
It was vintage Professor Vincent Isibor Odigie: master surgeon, gifted teacher and consummate storyteller.
Yet medicine was not his first love.
As a young man, Odigie dreamed of becoming an architect. He imagined himself designing buildings that would adorn skylines and stand the test of time. Fate, however, redirected his passion from drawing boards to operating tables—from designing structures of concrete and steel to preserving the most intricate structure of all, the human body.
That divine detour has since blossomed into one of Nigeria’s most distinguished surgical careers.
After earning his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in 1980, Professor Odigie devoted himself to surgery, steadily rising to become one of the country’s foremost colorectal surgeons. His professional excellence has earned him Fellowship of the Medical College of Surgeons (1993), the West African College of Surgeons (1996), the International College of Surgeons (1998), and, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to surgery, Fellowship of the prestigious American College of Surgeons (2015).
Forty-six years after stepping into the operating theatre, the veteran surgeon mounted the podium to deliver the University’s 366th Inaugural Lecture, aptly titled, “A Surgeon’s 46th Year of Surgical Soccering in a Changing Field of Play.”
What followed was a masterclass not only in medicine but also in communication.Professor Odigie demonstrated that the greatest teachers are not those who merely possess knowledge but those who can translate complex science into stories that ordinary people will remember long after the lecture has ended.
His tale, “when the anus went on strike,” had the audience laughing. Yet beneath the humour lay one of the most urgent public health messages Nigerians could hear.
Drawing from folklore, the Professor of General Surgery imagined the day God assembled the organs of the human body and invited each to choose where it wished to be.
“The anus said to all of them, ‘Look, if the mouth finishes eating, I want to be beside him here, so that as soon as what he doesn’t want is over, it should come out. It will be easy.’”
The other organs objected. “The ear said he didn’t want to be on the side. He wanted to be anteriorly and posteriorly so that he could hear. The eyes also had their own position. Even the heart was questioned: ‘Why should you alone be protected by bones?’”
In the end, the anus lost the argument.
“They overruled the anus, carried it to the most distant part of the body and tucked it there. The anus did not argue because it was very small—less than 0.5 per cent of the body’s surface.”
Then came the twist. “They all rejoiced that day. They ate and drank and celebrated that they had reached a political compromise on where every part of the body should be.”
But the celebration was short-lived. “The anus went on strike.”
The consequences were immediate.
“After twenty-four hours of everybody jollificating, the abdomen started distending. The man who took the rice started producing the rice back. The legs became weak. He couldn’t walk. Even the heart couldn’t beat very well. The eyes couldn’t see.”
The tiny organ the rest of the body had dismissed had brought the entire system to a standstill.
“They begged the anus and begged the anus and begged the anus. Finally, the anus signed an agreement with the whole body that whenever it gave a signal, everybody must stop whatever they were doing and go and use it.”
The audience erupted once more when the professor delivered the final punchline.
“It didn’t even end there. The anus also signed another irrevocable memorandum of understanding (MoU) that anytime you use me, you must clean me up. Until today, anytime the anus is used, we respectfully clean it.”
Then, with the precision of a surgeon making an incision, he delivered the moral. “That tells you the importance of the anus.”
Behind the humour lay a grim reality.
Professor Odigie lamented that countless Nigerians continue to mistake one of the deadliest warning signs of colorectal cancer for ordinary piles.
“There is a disease that if you travel anywhere in this country, you hear people say, ‘Pile, pile, pile.’ Everybody is talking that somebody has pile.”
He warned that such assumptions have become dangerously costly.
“The man has blood in his stool, and he assumes it is piles.”
The truth, he said, is often far more sinister.
“Colorectal cancer is the third or fourth cause of cancer death in our environment. It affects very young people and is always confused for piles.”
For more than 24 years, Professor Odigie has devoted his research to colorectal cancer, producing findings that challenge long-held assumptions and advocate earlier diagnosis.
“Anybody who comes with rectal bleeding, please put in your finger to examine that rectum,” he urged.
Explaining why, he added: “About 60 to 70 per cent of colorectal cancer is palpable by the finger because there is a mass inside the rectum.”
Then, his warning was stark: “Failure to do that, you have rendered the person—or you are giving the person a death sentence.”
He repeated the message for emphasis.
“Nobody should go away with blood per rectum and you did not examine the rectum.”
His advice to clinicians was unequivocal: “Never diagnose piles in adults without doing a digital rectal examination.”
He also revealed how his research has shown a changing pattern of the disease.
“A decade later, here in Benin, we reviewed the study and found that there is a cephalic progression. Tumours are now moving more proximally.”
Consequently, he recommended a broader diagnostic approach.
“In addition to doing a digital rectal examination, also do a colonoscopy to rule out rectal cancer.”
Taking the audience into the operating theatre, Professor Odigie described one of surgery’s most technically demanding procedures.
Hear him: “The most tedious operation for a general surgeon is called synchronous combined abdominoperineal excision of the rectum. You need at least four surgeons working for about three hours to remove the anus from where it is.”
Yet, despite all the advances in surgical science, he maintained that prevention and early diagnosis remain medicine’s most potent weapons.
His over 46 year journey, from an aspiring architect to an internationally acclaimed surgeon, researcher and teacher, has been one of constant learning, adaptation and service to humanity.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of his inaugural lecture was not surgical. It was educational.
Rather than overwhelm his audience with scientific terminology, Odigie chose humour over jargon, folklore over formulas and storytelling over statistics.
By the time the lecture ended, few people in the auditorium were likely to forget the image of the rebellious anus that brought the whole body to its knees.
More importantly, they were unlikely ever again to dismiss blood in the stool as “just piles.”
If that single lesson prompts even one person to seek medical attention early, then Professor Odigie’s most life-saving operation may not have taken place in an operating theatre. It may have happened in a lecture hall, armed not with a scalpel but with the enduring power of a well-told story.
