Uzodinma Iweala: A Writer turned Doctor

It’s one thing to come from a family of notable people, it’s another to be one. If you doubt this, then let’s ask Lola Shoneyin who had to remind the public that being married to a Soyinka didn’t put her on the pedestal of fame she currently occupies. Or Sikiru Ayinla, Femi and Seun Kuti, Dare Art Alade, Alhaja Modinat Asabi (Barrymade), Damilola Mike-Bamiloye and others who have had to continue somehow in their fathers’ steps. In a different view, for reasons of preferential treatment in certain quarters and even the public, s0me just revel in the perceived legacies of their fathers like Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, Folajimi Lai-mohammed, etc.

As gradually fizzling out, though customary, as directly influencing one’s child’s career might be, Uzodinma Iweala was not spared being the second child of four kids and the opara (first-born son). His choice of career had to tilt in one of the directions of his parents’ professions--economics or medicine. But then, whatever he did to push that to a later time must have been worth the wahala. Maybe that’s why he ended up studying English and American literature and language at Harvard University. After his graduation in 2004 and a recently publishednovel, 'Beast of No Nation’, in 2005 at twenty-three, Uzo felt a paradigm shift in his perspectives about life, and humanity and perhaps, the need to satisfy his parents but in all honesty, it really wasn’t clear what the shift was except the desire to impact on the world. Such is the feeling that comes when trying to find purpose right?

During this time, about a year and a half after H a r v a r d ( 2 0 0 6 precisely), he met Jeff Sachs, a specia l adviser o n the U.N.’s M i l l e n i u m Development Goals who had begun to compile a health-policy document that would set up the whole Millennium Villages Project and was sent off to Nigeria to work with people in the field. It was this knowledge of public health, his e x p e r i e n c e a n d p e o p l e ’ s perspectives that birthed his second book ‘Our Kind of People,’ in 2012 on HIV/AIDS. So, after weighing his options amidst confusions, he became largely influenced by his father’s humanitarian service to the people in the small village they come from in Nigeria when he ran free clinic on vacation year after year before his retirement. Deep down inside, he felt h i s m i s s i o n c o u l d b e c o m e accomplished by helping people. Then, he chose to go back to school to study medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. But there was a challenge… he wasn’t a pro at sciences. To a lot of people, that could have been a big deterrent. However, Uzo strove harder, applied and by a twist of fate got into the medical school. Now that he was inhis fears became real. He deferred for a year, went back in and even got more terrible blows---he failed a lot. But after four years of determination, he graduated in 2011 at the age of 29. 

‘Now what?’ Was the next question on his mind before moving back to Nigeria which became his home for the next six years. While here, he co-founded Ventures Africa magazine with his uncle---a publication that covers the evolving business, policy, culture, and innovation spaces in Africa---and learnt how to relate well with people of all types. The Nigerian thing boxed him in you would say, hun? In 2017, after testing the waters in Naija, Uzo found himself at the crossroads again. He thought about what his next move would be: either to return to the U.S or continue to weather the storm in Naija like every young person full of dreams. Just then, the opportunity to head The Africa Centre, a nonprofit museum on Fifth Avenue in New York City, came along and he jumped at it prompting his relocation to the U.S. 

Today, Uzodinma Iweala, son of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former minister of finance in Nigeria in the days of Obasanjo and partly Yar’Adua’s and the present Director-General of World Trade Organization, who has three books to his c r e d i t i n c l u d i n g ‘ S p e a k N o Evil,’published in 2018 and awards like Eager Prize for Best Undergraduate Short Story (2003), the Horman Prize for Excellence in Creative Writing (2003), Hoopes Prize and Dorothy Hicks L e e P r i z e f o r O u t s t a n d i n g Undergraduate Thesis (2004); the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and the John Llewellyn Prize from Booktrust, all for ’Beasts of No Nation,’ has settled down to build on the creative part of him that he thought was kind of inadequate to impact on the world. Destiny you say, hun?