Opinion
By Obi Trice Emeka
SIR Paul Chukwuma could have been a priest. He had spent the early part of his life fascinated by the thoughts of the priesthood and how priests were the agents of transformation in many communities in the hinterlands. Then, he had an epiphany; if he excelled academically, he could make the world a much better place through entrepreneurship, just as he could have through the priesthood.
Paul Chukwuma, born on February 27, 1978, at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Ihiala, is the second son of Mr Titus and Mrs Florence Chukwuma, both of Nneyi, Umueri, in Anambra State. His father was a devout Catholic and a civil servant with the water corporation of the old Anambra State. As the son of a civil servant, Paul would traverse the lengths of Anambra State as his father got posted from one location to another. The family would later settle at Ekwulobia in Aguata LGA of Anambra, where he grew up. The family still maintains a family house at Ekwulobia.
Paul’s father, who wanted him to be a priest, influenced his entrance into the Juniorate Seminary in Ihiala, where he initially trained to be a priest; however, providence had other plans for him.
He enrolled at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, between 1997 and 2001 to study philosophy and graduated with a first-class degree. Poised to become an entrepreneur, he would reject the offer to join academia because of his passion for entrepreneurship.
In 2020, he graduated from Baze University, Abuja, with a law degree and proceeded to the University of Derby, United Kingdom, between 2022 and 2023 for his master’s degree in law, graduating with a distinction in Intellectual Property and Information Communication Technology Law.
Paul Chukwuma is also a 2006 alumnus of Lagos Business School’s Owners-Managers Programme. He has just finished from the Nigerian Law School, Abuja, and awaiting a call to the Bar.
Born eight years after the Nigeria-Biafra war, Paul saw firsthand his people’s survival skills and various innovations to survive despite the odds.
Despite his initial desire to become a priest, the young Paul would soon be influenced by his childhood memories and understood that there were many other ways to make the world a better place other than the vocation of priesthood.
His luck came during his NYSC days, when he was posted to the National Assembly for his mandatory one-year service and, through a stroke of luck, found favour with one of the National Assembly’s committees. He would recollect with nostalgia how he would travel on night buses to Lagos to make purchases for the committee to beat the quotation of their existing suppliers and return with a night bus within 24 hours to Abuja with the supplies.
He would follow his passion for writing, mainly buoyed by his love for Afrocentrism, to set up Amity Press, publishers of Amity Magazine, with some of his friends. Through the exposure of publishing, which took him to the UK for the first time, he contacted the owners of an ICT Management Software. He became their representative in Nigeria for almost a decade.
Paul Chukwuma is the founder of Olivia University in Burundi and the Pro-Chancellor of Benue State University in Makurdi.
A son of a devout Catholic, Paul believes his success in life has been as a result of grace. He credits his father’s sacrifices as the source of that grace. His traditional moniker is Onye chi n’azo, O si na ya n’azo onwe ya. He recollects his father’s generosity to the poor and his service to the church, which he often misunderstood as a child for laying the ground for what he has become. He says, “For every period in my life where it appears, I have hit a wall, something miraculously happens, and doors open.”
Paul, a former National Auditor of the All Progressives Congress (APC), believes that the problem with governance in Anambra is the absence of home-grown solutions and the over-reliance on a theoretical framework that is not relative to our group’s history. For him, public service is the only way to make an impact that has a multiplier effect on millions of people:
“As one who believes in charity, I have kept giving and providing to the needy, but it appears that the more I give, the more those I give multiply. Thus, I realised that we have to limit the source of poverty and enlarge group prosperity, and public service is the only way to do this. Reluctantly, I had to leave my comfort zone, so I offered to join the fray. I have pragmatic ideas that can make Anambra the commercial centre of Eastern Nigeria.”
Photo Caption: Sir Paul Chukwuma.
21st December, 2024.C.E
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