African Leadership Magazine Interviews Sir Emeka Offor

African Leadership Magazine put a wide range of questions to Sir Emeka Offor for its May 2013 cover profile, “Determination is everything”, written by Sam Hart. His answers on the Foundation’s work are reproduced here.

In line with his determination to stay true to his humble beginnings and lift as many people as he can from the shackles of poverty, in 2003, he established the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation (SEOF), a non-profit, charitable organization, with a vision to reduce poverty and create life-improving economic opportunities for those residing in Nigeria’s most marginalized communities through education, health care services, widows cooperative, youth empowerment/employment and infrastructural development.

Sir Emeka Offor, through the SEOF, has embarked on a number of projects like giving scholarships to less privileged students both in secondary and tertiary institutions, building and furnishing classroom blocks. In collaboration with Books For Africa (BFA) he donated over 10 million USD worth of books, computers and other educational materials to schools in Nigeria and West African countries, establishing health centres and providing free medical consultations, treatment and drugs, establishing a $100,000 Glaucoma research grant at the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Mainz, Germany and also established a Nigerian fellowship of Cataract Surgery and Glaucoma Management at the same university, establishing widows cooperatives to help widows become and remain independent, offering automatic employment in his company and a brand new car to graduates of tertiary institutions who make first class honours, drilling boreholes that supply safe drinking water, provision and installation of transformers and road construction.

A member of Rotary International, Sir Offor was elevated to the status of the Foundation Circle of the Arch C. Klumph Society (AKS) of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. This is as a result of his singular donation of over $1 million to Rotary Foundation spread across the four (4) cardinal endeavours of Rotary, viz; Peace and Conflict Management, Maternal and Child Death, Basic Education and Literacy, and Polio Eradication. By the above donation Sir Emeka remains Rotary’s highest donor in the African continent.

African Leadership Magazine recently raised a wide range of issues for Sir Emeka Offor to address. His responses are reproduced here.

In a nutshell, how best do we describe you?

I am simply Sir Emeka Offor, the son of a policeman, born in Kafanchan. I stand for excellence. I am a goal-getter. I set big personal goals and enjoy the challenge of achieving the extraordinary and being the best I can be. I am a firm believer in the old Christian values of hard work and dedication to duty, and I am an ardent admirer of these qualities in others.

What triggered the philanthropic bent in you?

I have always had a desire and yearning to help people. Coming from a humble background, I know what it means to be on the other side of the divide. I have a passion to uplift people and make them independent and self-sufficient.

You are a successful man by all standards, how did you get here?

It is by the grace of God. One can only set goals for himself, and commit himself to realizing his vision of the future, choosing to be focused, diligent and courageous in his pursuit of excellence, trusting that with God, all things are possible. He has rewarded my efforts, and for that I am truly grateful.

Rotary International recently celebrated you. What is the extent of your involvement with Rotary?

I am a member of Rotary International. I am deeply involved in the 4 cardinal pursuits of the Rotary Foundation, which are; peace and Conflict Management, Maternal and Child Death, Basic Education and Literacy, and Polio and Guinea Worm Eradication. I have made an outstanding donation of 250,000 USD for Peace studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, 250,000 USD for Polio eradication, 250,000 USD for Guinea worm eradication and another 250,000 USD for Women empowerment programs. Recently I was inducted into the Arch Klumph Society of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International, an honour reserved for individuals who have donated over $250,000 to its causes. I have donated over $1 million, making me the highest donor to Rotary International from Africa.

Nigeria is still grappling with enormous challenges in the midst of plenty. Can you proffer a panacea to our national challenges?

Instead of asking what the government can do about the situation, I have always taken the position that there must be something in my power to do, some impact I can make, something I can contribute to help remedy the situation. I believe in the dictum, “A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” The problem of poverty is not unique to Nigeria alone. The answer to the question of wealth creation and distribution has always been the creation of value.

To this effect, through the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation, we have embarked on various Youth Empowerment Schemes, with particular focus on skills acquisition programmes. I have unshakeable faith in the never-say-die spirit of the Nigerian.

They say that knowledge is power. This has informed our heavy investments in education. The Sir Emeka Offor Foundation is the largest single sponsor of Books For Africa, a not-for-profit organization, bringing in over 10 million USD worth of books, computers and other educational materials to our national institutions of learning and public libraries.

Since we are of the opinion that only informed people can make informed decisions, we are not going to relent on our efforts.

We are well aware of the plight of widows in our nation. We are actively involved in empowering these women through our Widows’ Cooperative Schemes. We are dissatisfied with merely doling out hand-outs to them, which can only ameliorate their conditions for a time, but seek to help them achieve a level of independence and self-sufficiency.

I strongly believe that if these efforts are replicated by others, the press will be singing a different tune about Nigeria in the not-too-distant future.