My parents did not know my siblings died of sickle cell — Kuku

In this interview with BANKOLE TAIWO, Dr Sonny Kuku, the new Ogbeni Oja of Ijebuland, an accomplished physician and co-founder of EKO Hospital Plc, talks about  his life journey as he turns 80

Can you give us an insight into your birth and early childhood?

I was born into the illustrious family of Balogun Kuku in Ijebu Ode. I was born on January 3, 1944, in Jos, now the capital of Plateau State. That was when we were still one as a nation. Your tribe and tongue made no difference. Curiously, my birth had its own special story because I am the only surviving child of my mother's seven children, even though my father had other children. Actually, I am the third born of my mother, the first and second ‘born' died in infancy. Then I came around and stayed while the other four born after me also died. It was much later in life when I was at medical school that I ran some tests and discovered that I had the trait of sickle cell in my body. From this hindsight, I can say that my siblings died of sickle cell anaemia. Though this wasn't known then because of the level of exposure to medical knowledge. In any way, I am a miracle child…

…(cuts in) What do you mean sir?

 My birth was actually foretold by this great man and founder of the Christ Apostolic Church, Ayo Babalola. I was told that when this great man of God was in Jos, my father and mum went to him for prayers. They told him of their predicament of how their children had been dying but the man of God prayed for my parents. He then prophesied that their next child would stay and that the miracle child would be great in life; so he said my name would be Amos. As God would have it, I was born in a CAC on a Sunday; so my father used to say that a holy man prophesied about my birth. I was born in a holy place on a day regarded as holy too, so he said I should be called Sunday in addition to Amos that the Prophet gave me. However, due to the cultural aspects of our lives, I was also given “Folorunsho”, meaning “God should protect this one because others before him had died” and this is the name that many people have known me with till today.

What will you consider as very striking things that happened during your childhood?

I really had a chequered childhood because my mother moved back to Lagos leaving my dad in Jos because of all of these challenges of her children dying and all that so I began living with my mother in Lagos but my father equally wanted me. He was insisting that I should live with him; so it became a drag between my mother who was not ready to let her only child live away from her and my dad who wanted me very badly to be with him. Curiously, I loved my dad. I was about five years old at that time; so a family meeting was called for me to decide where I wanted to stay. I realised that a day before the meeting, my mother had been extraordinarily nice to me buying me things and pampering me. Ordinarily, my mother wouldn't do that. , She was a strict mother despite the fact that I was her only child, and I want to say probably that is why I am where I am today because of the way she brought me up.

Anyway, at the meeting, with all my mum had done, all the care and pampering, she was even making eyes at me and all that (laughs) I decided I was going to be living with my father. I just loved my father. He had this panache. He was a fine man, and he was someone you could be proud to have as a father. At this point, my poor mother broke down in tears but I had made my choice so I went back with him to Jos. My father at that time was a war businessman. This was the period of the World War II. Right from time, my father had always wanted me to be a medical doctor, so when I moved back with him, he reinforced that too. However, fortunes changed for him. The war was over and business seemed not to be moving as it was before; so we moved back to Ibadan. Let me also add that I went to many schools. While I was with my mother, I went to a Catholic school. Back in Jos, I went to an Anglican school and now in Ibadan. My father was a CAC and Aladura member, so in terms of religion, I have seen this religion in various shapes and sizes. This was probably shaping me because I understand all the sects and their nuances as far as Christianity and Islam are concerned. My own father was born Ishau, a Muslim. My great-great-grandfather brought Islam to Ijebu Ode. Though my father later converted, he once dabbled into Ogboni and as the first son, he used to take me to the Iledi, which is where they have their meetings.

How will you describe your primary and secondary school education?

 That was quite interesting. I started with a Catholic school, St Patrick, where we have St Dominic now in Yaba, Lagos. My mum was a Catholic too just like her dad. When I moved back to Jos, I joined an Anglican school which had a lot of Igbo and Yoruba children with some Hausas too, so I was very fluent in the three languages. Unfortunately, when I moved to Ibadan, I lost the ability to speak Hausa and Igbo probably because there was no one to speak the language to in Ibadan. I was about six years old at that time. In Ibadan, I joined an Aladura school but I then came back to Lagos; I was ‘kidnapped' back to Lagos…

..(cuts in) How do you mean sir?

There is my aunt who was very close to my father. In fact, she used to be the go-between, collecting love letters to give to my mother when my father was dating my mum. So one day, she came around to see my father and found out that I was really in bad shape so she plotted how she could return me to my mum in Lagos. She then persuaded my father to let her take me to Lagos to spend the holiday after which she would bring me back to Ibadan but she never did. As soon as I got to Lagos, my mum who was a teacher put me in school and she never allowed me to return to Ibadan. My father, of course, did not take it so kindly with my aunt because she failed to honour her words so my father declared her persona non grata. It was that painful to my father. However, it was a good and timely move for me because I was really getting little care and was already becoming as rascally as you could imagine. I didn't know this but my elder sisters told me. They said they would not find me in school and at home I would be nowhere too; so at about 10pm while checking the motor parks around, they would find me sleeping in one corner, but it was a new life entirely when I moved back to Lagos. It was an orderly life. My mum was a teacher and a strict one at that. I was put in the Salvation Army which could be classified at that time as the lowest of them all. In my first result there, I came second or third and when my aunt told my father that I came third in my new school, he said definitely there must be only three pupils in that school (laughs). However, from this school, I passed into the prestigious King's College, Lagos. It was like doing the impossible, like passing the donkey through the eye of a needle because it was so difficult at that time to gain entrance into the school.

When I passed into the King's College, not many believed it. Being an Ivy League school, many thought that you must bribe your way in, but I never did that. In fact, I was among the top three across the country so I was given a full Federal Government scholarship; boarding, feeding, free tuition, and even pocket money too; so I did not really have problems in going to school. When I was with my father, he was well off to pay, and when I got to Lagos, the tuition was free because my mum was a teacher. Let me also tell you this scenario, as the only child of my mother, I am not akebaje, the spoiled brat. My mother made me do all that I needed to do and learn. I would fetch water, grind pepper, and even cut wood not because there were no other people who could do them. We had house help but my mother said that there were things I must know how to do. Sometimes, she would put bread in a tray and put it on my head and say take this down the street and come back, not necessarily because I needed to hawk, no, but just to let this serve as a form of exercise and training.

What happened after leaving King's College sir?

 After King's College, I went to the university. Admission into university was however really tough during that period because we only had a few universities; so you really had to be at the very top to get admission and you must have passed your A-levels or HSE. Again, as God would have it, I was among the best two if not the very best in my A-level subjects and I got admission to study medicine at the University of Ibadan with a Federal Government scholarship. However, the University of Lagos which was about to admit its third set of medical students, started enticing four of us who were very brilliant. They said they wanted us to come to their school with the assurance of scholarships and all that. So, I shelved going to the University of Ibadan and embraced UNILAG.

After your graduation, what did you do next?

I did my housemanship, which was quite compulsory, and then gained admission into the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in England, UK, which was the best hospital in the Commonwealth at that time. It was like Harvard and I actually had admission into Harvard too but I decided to opt for the Royal Postgraduate School because of how complex I had made my life at that time. I had a B.Sc, MBBS, and M.Sc and I wanted where I could do my PhD with my professional examinations. So, I got a Commonwealth scholarship to go do my Ph.D. and the professional examinations. The Ph.D. and professional examinations were supposed to take me three years each, six or seven years altogether. So when I got there, I told my supervisor that I would like to run the two programmes together. Yes, it wasn't strange to them because they knew it was possible. America was already doing it but they were not quite sure the two could be done under three years. I was told that I should remember that I had a three-year scholarship and what would happen afterwards. I told them to let us wait and see but God helping me, I finished the two programmes, the PhD and professional examinations under three years.

You will be about the first Nigerian to have accomplished this feat.

Well, yes, at that time. I will say I was one of the first people to do it; that is, running the PhD and professional examinations together within three years. I may not be able to say if I was the first Nigerian to accomplish this feat because I don't have a full grasp of the history of the place but definitely one of the first Nigerians if not the first and for many years. My name kept on ringing in that school because of this no mean feat. When I was finishing the programme, I was already qualified to be a professor or an associate professor. I considered myself to still be very young and that I still needed more training and exposure, so I took a job at the University of Chicago to do what is called a post-doctoral fellowship and again that turns to be another big plus for me. So, by the time I came to Nigeria in December 1975, I was fully trained as a professional, a sub-specialist, and an academic. On getting to Nigeria, I then decided to get a job with the University of Lagos, which I thought would be like a walk in the park but it turned out to be one of the hardest nuts I would ever crush in my life.

Why?

This is because despite being one of their topmost best, I did not receive a reply to my intention to work with them, I mean UNILAG, and up till today, I still hear that my record there remains unbroken, though, that would be surprising for me to find out anyway. You can then imagine how things were at that time. I had thought that I would easily be grabbed but you know the Nigeria mentality, they don't want anyone to come and rock the boat. Suddenly, one of my friends, Bashorun JK Randle, who happened to be my classmate in secondary school came to America to visit me and I told him of my intention to return to Nigeria, he then told our head of department who was really not happy hearing about that, he asked, “How could he say he wanted to leave, everyone needed him here?'' But I said I would be coming back to Nigeria. This was the time Gen. Muritala Muhammed was the military head of state. My friend, JK Randle, a prolific writer who was privy to all that was happening with my intention to work with UNILAG, then wrote an article in one of the newspapers titled “Too Good To Be Employed”. Gen. Muritala Muhammad saw the article and sent for Randle to come and explain what the article was all about. Randle went to see the Head of State, and Muritala said he wanted to see me but Randle said this man was in America. The following day, Muritala said that Randle should come to his office because he wanted to talk to me personally. While still in America, my phone rang and on the other end I heard this was Muritala. I thought it was a joke. In fact, if it were to be these days, I would have taken such a call to be from these scammers but Randle was also standing by, so he collected the phone and said, “This is real, you are on to the Head of State, tell him everything.'' I was put on call back to Muritala and he told me to start coming to Nigeria and that when I get back to the country I should go see my friend who would arrange how I would see him. There and then, I packed my things and moved back to Nigeria. My friend told Muritala that I was back in the country so he said we should both come and see him. We went to see the Head of State one evening at his residence in Ikoyi. His residence had no walls, and we met him outside praying. He was very simple. He told us to appear at the Ministry of Health the following day. When we got there, the minister and other top officials were already lined up and were expecting the worst because they knew that the Head of State wouldn't take it kindly with them. He would say we said, “We wanted the best to work with us and you were treating this one the way you like.” They knew they would not survive being sacked because at that time the Head of State was just sacking people. However, it turned out that I applied to work with LUTH and not the Ministry of Health so their blood pressure went down. I was then asked to go to LUTH to pick up a job there, a lecturing job. I got there and they began their drama again. There were no obstacles they didn't put in the way, just trying to find faults here and there despite the intervention of the Head of State. Anyway, they no longer had a choice and I was given a temporary lecturing job, so I had to apply to validate the temporary offer. On the day of the interview, fortunately, or unfortunately, it was the same panel that was interviewing those to be employed as lecturers and senior lecturers. So, after the interview, one of the external assessors said that there was no way he would appoint anyone as senior lecturer if I wasn't considered given all my training and qualifications. Then the battle started, they said no, no, he applied to be a lecturer and the external assessor said yes, that “we can see but he has all the papers and the training, and he is qualified as well to be employed as a senior lecturer.” Then they came again and said a year was missing in my training which I must make up. So I was eventually employed as a Senior Lecturer with another letter to make up for the year said to be missing. After this, the war began again and I had to leave the university…

Why?

What happened was that the position of a professorship opened at the university and I applied but I was not even shortlisted. I didn't say they should take me but I was not even shortlisted. They said the same thing that happened when I was employed would happen again; that I would then be taken and become a professor over those who taught me but I didn't understand them because I have the training, the journals, and so on. So I said, “If you are not going to shortlist me for this professorship vacancy l will leave.” To them, it was like a case of someone that they never wanted in the first instance, so it didn't take them days to accept my resignation letter and that was how I left LUTH and then began my own clinic

Was that how the story of EKO Hospital began?

That was a factor additionally. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who took over after Muritala was killed, barred medical doctors working with the government from engaging in private practice. I had to choose if I would go private or be with the government. Many people actually left the service then but in my own case, two things happened. My field, endocrinology which is about studying hormones was very rare and you cannot treat people having hormonal problems without measuring them but the tools and technology to use were very expensive and they didn't allow me to set up the laboratory in LUTH because of the needless hostility towards me. So, I had to borrow money to set up this lab outside which I run alongside my clinic. Without this laboratory, an endocrinologist will not be able to do the job because it is akin to a surgeon without a scalpel.

 I had to decide if I would not let my investment in the lab become a waste or continue in a place where they did not even appreciate scholarships. Secondly, my two other colleagues and I had been running a clinic. We were using a rented flat. My two other colleagues were Alex Eneli, a gynaecologist, Amachi Obiora, a surgeon, and myself, Kuku for internal medicine. That was how we came about the name EKO Hospital. We used our initials to form the name of the hospital. We were using the same flat but running different clinics according to our area of specialty. We were operating independently referring patients to one another at the beginning. However, we decided to form a partnership and merge our services to run a hospital. We borrowed some funds and it was about this time that Obasanjo came with his policy. We said to ourselves whether we should return this money and continue with government practice or take our destiny into our own hands. At this point in time, things were already going down in government teaching hospitals. All of these factors coupled with how shabbily and unjustly I was treated in LUTH made the three of us bid the government job farewell and we embraced the private practice.

 Although my mother could not fathom all of these, I gave my mother a bit of trouble with some of my decisions. Anyway, that was how we started EKO Clinic and because we had tertiary backgrounds, you know we were all coming from LUTH, we could do some things differently with a touch of first class. From one clinic, we moved to two, three, four, and so on. We then began a hospital and because we were getting a high volume of patronage and there was a need for expansion, we built the one in Ikeja. We started tertiary medicine, and we began training students, interns, and doctors to be consultants. We became the first tertiary hospital in the private sector, and the first private teaching hospital in the country. We train postgraduate students in Medicine, Physiotherapy and all that. A lot of people come in there for their internship and housemanship.

When did you start the EKO Hospital?

We started in 1978. My two other partners have both passed away. Lest I forget, the entrepreneurial prowess and success of EKO Hospital lies in the fact that it became the first hospital to be quoted on the stock exchange and up till now no other one yet. It was the first time Medicine was turned into a business.

What made you go to the stock exchange?

Yes, when we wanted to start the tertiary hospital, we needed N15m which is like N15bn today, so we started approaching banks to give us money but they kept asking us how many injections we would give before we paid back the money. This was in the mid-80s. The money was huge and they thought that we wouldn't be able to pay it back. They did all the calculations and said we couldn't get the money.

However, one day,  I met the Director-General of the Stock Exchange Market on a flight and he said that I heard you guys could not get the funds you wanted from the banks. He then suggested that we should go to the stock exchange; that once the bank heard that we were quoted, we would get the money, and that by going to the stock exchange, we would have been able to spread the risk among maybe 10,000 or 15,000 shareholders. So based on this counsel, we went back to the bank and discussed going to the stock exchange. We told them to put down whatever they could afford while we approached the stock exchange to raise further funds. They did all the workings, there were complications but somehow they were able to work out something and we got quoted. The banks gave us the money that they could raise. However, we had this brilliant accountant then who told us that we should wait for another two years before going, that the two years would enable us to have history, and records of our cash flow, and people would get to know the capacity and pedigree of where they were investing in and they would be willing to buy the share. As God would help us, we finished payment of the money we collected within the two years. So it was easy for us to go to the stock exchange. This success led to the birth of other big hospitals later.

What makes the Kuku family so thick and special in Ijebu land?

I think it is God and our ancestors. Our ancestors were the most famous military people in Ijebuland. One of our great ancestors fought many battles for the Ijebuland. He was the richest businessman too. There was no standing army for the Ijebuland but these businessmen had slaves and soldiers that defended their caravan whenever they were on business trips, so the richer you were the bigger your army. Whenever there was any form of attack, these big men were usually called upon to come and help with their soldiers. And more importantly, he was a Muslim cleric. He made Islam very popular in Ijebuland. The history behind this was that he was initially a Christian but when he wanted to do baptism, he was told someone like him couldn't be baptised because he had many wives. Kuku was not ready to send any of his wives away so he later embraced Islam which allows a man to marry more wives. It was said that the day Kuku was turbaned a Muslim, thousands converted alongside him. He exerted so much influence in the early days of Islam in Ijebuland that it was called Kuku's religion. So when you have the financial resources, the military powers and so much of religious influence, you have got it all. The now famous and glamorous Ojude Oba festival which is now on the global stage started with this great man, Kuku.

How are you taking this new honour, Ogbeni Oja of Ijebuland?

It is another heavy responsibility but like I have described to you, I am not strange to heavy responsibilities. Luckily, I have had fantastic predecessors who have done so well, so my dream is to probably surpass their exploits, that will be a big plus. However, there are so many things to be done in Ijebuland to boost its socio-economic development. Ijebu is falling behind in the country. Many of these big states now were provinces like Ijebu but because we have not gotten that lucky to be a state, we have not really harnessed our resources. My leadership will be deployed towards infrastructural development, commerce, and industries.

When you look at 80 years of your life, what is that thing that you will always thank God for?

I have never underestimated God or ruled out God's factor in my life because it has always been moving upward ever since. The truth also is that heaven helps those who help themselves and that is why whatever I wanted to do I have always done it giving it my very best. Somehow, it is like I have been selected from the beginning to reach the top of everything that I have done, so it might be difficult to say this is the best thing I have done. I was at the top while in primary and secondary schools. I graduated top of the university and in my profession. I have been President of West Africa Postgraduate Medical College. In my own area of specialty, endocrinology, I have been given honourary life president. The success story of EKO Hospital to be the first hospital to be quoted on the stock exchange is there, I have been Chairman of Ecobank because as I was doing medicine. I went into finance management too, so I became bank director and president of Bank Directors. I have also had my imprint in the public service. I once served as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Board of Ogun State University now Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. I was Chairman of the Governing Board of the University of Ife Teaching Hospital now Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital. I have been Chairman of the Governing Council of University College Hospital Ibadan and recently Pro-Chancellor, of the University of Benin. In Ijebuland, I am Olor'oogun, the head of the warriors and now another one is added, the Ogbeni Oja…sincerely I am grateful to God.