NFL player-turned doctor starting medical practice in Nigeria

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether he was running through defenders in the NFL or studying relentlessly for medical school exams, Dr. Samkon Gado, M.D., (’05) has led a life marked by resiliency and obedience to God’s leading.

Gado was born in Kafai, Gombe State, Nigeria. His family moved to South Carolina before high school so that he could pursue an American education.

After a standout athletic career in high school, where he lettered in three sports and received all-state football honors as a senior running back, Gado received a football scholarship from Liberty, a Division I-AA program at the time.

Following the 2004 season, Gado was recognized as an All-Big South Conference selection but was bypassed in the 2005 NFL Draft. He was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Kansas City Chiefs, where he spent less than two months before being signed by the Green Bay Packers. He impressed the league enough in his rookie season to remain there for six years, spending time with six different teams and racking up 12 touchdowns and over 1,000 yards of offense during his time in the NFL.

But football was never his intended career. Gado’s goal in the NFL was certainly an unconventional one: to save his earnings to pay for medical school and fulfill a dream of serving in medical missions.

Gado married his wife, Rachel, in 2010, and with her support traded a football uniform for a white coat, starting medical school at Medical University of South Carolina. Near the end of his time there, he traveled to Nigeria to do a one-month rotation of his ENT (ear, nose, and throat) residency with Saint Louis University.

He had first considered medical missions when he was a Liberty student, but working in Nigeria only further confirmed a desire God had laid on his heart years earlier.

“I always felt a tug toward cross-cultural missions. My grandfather was a local missionary to Nigeria, and my father was a pastor and minister and has been in the ministry my whole life. I kind of resisted until I came to Liberty,” he said. “I was ready to go somewhere where the Gospel had never gone before. But my idea of missions began morphing a bit, and instead of setting up a hut and serving as many people as I could until I die, I started thinking, ‘What if missions could be a little more organized?’ and I began thinking more about infrastructure.”

In 2019, Gado and his sister, Ruth, founded The Jonah Inheritance with the purpose of reimagining healthcare in Nigeria from a Gospel perspective. The name comes from both sets of their grandparents’ names: Yunana, a version of “Jonah,” and Gado, which means “Inheritance.”

Gado said the nation is desperate for this type of medical relief.

“Nigeria’s strength is it is one of the top exporters of physicians in the world, but it has one of the worst healthcare systems and the worst infrastructure, so there is a disconnect there,” he said.

The vision includes building a self-sustaining hospital on a 28-acre campus in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. Gado said they have raised enough funds to build a border fence and hope to break ground on the hospital this year. The Jonah Inheritance is already actively at work training in-country doctors and medical staff.

Nigerian partners have been overseeing the projects while Gado is in Lynchburg, where he returned in 2020 to work as an ENT surgeon. He is working with his former roommate from Liberty, Dr. Jay Cline (’05); the two are partners at Blue Ridge ENT.

While Gado serves patients locally, he’s also making plans to someday move with his wife and four sons to Nigeria and focus his full attention on The Jonah Inheritance.

“The idea of going to Nigeria, for both of us, is very difficult,” he said. “That’s why what really keeps us moving in that direction, truly, is what the Lord is doing in both of our hearts.”

Gado said his ultimate goal is to not only help people heal physically but also share the Gospel message with them.

“I started seeing medicine from a slightly different perspective, using the Gospel as a framework to actually break down disease,” he said. “I think diseases preach the Gospel to us, and if you think of how diseases happen, you can see and preach through a disease.”

He said cancer is one example.

“Cancer is a cell creating its own agenda. It doesn’t really matter what that agenda is; it’s just an agenda different than what it was designed to do. When it reproduces itself, it destroys the organ and eventually can metastasize to the body and end in death. That’s no different than the sin of Adam.”

Gado said God looks at the heart of the issue, and that is how healing truly comes.

“He doesn’t go after the behaviors. The only way that sin can be addressed is by changing the heart. Once you fix the broken DNA, the body naturally takes care of the cancer.

“Couple our understanding of the Gospel and how it affects medicine with doctors who are of the same mind and who are capable, and teaching them how to marry the Gospel with medicine … now, the whole healthcare encounter is a Gospel presentation.”

While Gado has always had a warrior spirit, he said it was awakened, shaped, and encouraged the most during his time at Liberty, where he encountered LU founder Jerry Falwell Sr. and others whose hearts were on fire for the Gospel and displayed how that message can change the world.

“Spiritually and practically, Jerry Falwell has really been a role model to me,” Gado said. “The biggest thing that Liberty has been to me is that it was an incubator for many things. It allowed me to find godly relationships. For the first time in my life, I was meeting people my age who had a deep passion for the Lord and a passion to serve Him. And that, more than anything, is what the Lord used to deepen my faith. I found brothers, a community of believers, who were following hard after the Spirit of Christ.”

Although securing the finances for The Jonah Inheritance is essential to the project’s success, Gado said he is choosing to look back at the example Falwell gave in achieving his own God-given dream.

“I think of Falwell often, and the parallels are amazing,” Gado said. “He had a vision, and he was unwavering. He knew the power his vision had, and what would fuel his vision wasn’t money; it was prayer. (Dr. Falwell) acquired as much land as possible — long before Liberty was even capable of filling that land. But he, in faith, trusted that the Lord was going to bring the vision to fruition, and he literally took that step (of faith).”

Gado said he will continue to visit Nigeria each year until they move there permanently.

“That’s not something that we would have naturally chosen for ourselves; that wasn’t something that I wanted to do,” he said. “But my commitment to the Gospel needs to be unwavering and, in the end, it will be shown to be true just like it has been for Liberty.”

Learn more at TheJonahInheritance.org.

By Jacob Couch, Liberty Journal

Inflation in Nigeria quickened in February

Nigeria's inflation picked up again in February, hitting 21.91% in annual terms from 21.82% in January, the statistics agency said on Wednesday.

Inflation rose in Africa's biggest economy for 10 straight months last year, prompting a string of interest rate hikes from the central bank. The pace of price increases dipped in December but started to rise again in January.

Food inflation, which accounts for the bulk of Nigeria's inflation basket, rose to 24.35% in February from 24.32% in January.

High inflation, weak economic growth and mounting insecurity were major issues at last month's election, where the ruling party's candidate won in a poll marred by low voter turnout, logistical failures and disruption to voting in some places.

"The rise in food inflation was caused by increases in prices of oil and fat, bread and cereals, potatoes, yam ... fish, fruits, meat, vegetable and food products," the National Bureau of Statistics said in its inflation report.

Policymakers have linked inflationary pressures to Nigeria's infrastructure problems and the fact that a lot of items people consume are imported.

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele has said the bank will maintain a hawkish stance on rates if inflation remains elevated. The bank holds a monetary policy meeting next Tuesday.

The CBN hiked its key interest rate to 17.5% in January, meaning there have been 600 basis points of rate hikes since last May.

By Chijioke Ohuocha, Reuters

Video - Flying Eagles of Nigeria shift focus to Under-20 World Cup

Nigeria's Flying Eagles won bronze at the CAF Under-20 AFCON in Egypt having fallen in their bid to secure a record-extending eighth title when they lost 1-nil to Gambia in the semis. However, their 4-nil rout of Tunisia in the third-placed play-off in Cairo on Friday night gives the team a platform to do well at the Under-20 World Cup in Indonesia, later this year.

CGTN

Central Bank of Nigeria says old naira notes still legal tender

Nigeria’s central bank will allow old bank notes to continue as legal tender until the end of the year to comply with a court order earlier this month, according to a statement late on Monday, raising hopes this would ease acute cash shortages in the economy.

On March 3, the Supreme Court ordered the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to extend the use of old 1,000 ($2.17), 500, and 200 naira notes until December 31. The initial withdrawal of the notes from circulation became an election issue after causing widespread hardship and anger.

CBN said it was complying with the law and that the old notes would circulate with new ones of equivalent value. Earlier, on Monday evening, a statement from the Nigerian presidency said President Muhammadu Buhari did not urge the CBN not to obey the court order.

“The CBN has no reason not to comply with court orders on the excuse of waiting for directives from the President,” it said.

In a country where most people rely on cash for everything from buying food from markets to taxi fares, the shortages of naira notes have riled citizens, a few of whom have attacked banks and burned cash-dispensing machines.

By Camillus Eboh, Reuters

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Video - Nigerian banks face a shortage of new naira notes

 

 

Gunmen kill 17 in Northern Nigeria

The death toll in the Saturday's attack and reprisal attack has risen to about 17 including a Police officer in communities of Zangon-Kataf in the southern part of Kaduna State.

LEADERSHIP earlier reported that about 10 corpses were discovered following the incident.

Trouble started in the area on Thursday last week when a young herder was tied to a tree and macheted to death by some locals around Ungwan Juju, LEADERSHIP gathered.

It was further gathered that the situation became compounded between Saturday morning and afternoon when a misunderstanding ensued between security operatives and some Fulani men at a checkpoint in Ungwan Wakili, which led to a Fulani man and a Policeman being shot at the checkpoint.

Also, later that evening, a group of youths, who went fishing, were attacked and one of them was said to have been macheted to death by herders in a reprisal attack.

A senior military source from the area told our Correspondent in confidence that: "On Thursday last week, one Umar Sambo (a herder) was killed while he was returning from grazing his cattle around Ungwan Juju in Zangon Kataf LGA.

"The killers tied the young herder up, matcheted him to death and hid the corpse in an unknown location. When his brother, identified as Safiyanu, could not find him, he reported to the security agents, who then launched a search operation. His body was finally discovered at Ungwan Juju."

He said the security situation, which they were making efforts to manage, became compounded Saturday evening when there was a clash between security operatives and some Fulanis at a checkpoint in Ungwan Wakili, which led to the death of a Fulani man and a Policeman.

According to him, "Ungwan Wakili village of Atyap Chiefdom in Zangon Kataf LGA was attacked by unidentified persons around 8:40pm on Saturday, in an apparent reprisal attack following the killing of the herder earlier mentioned.

"Another suspected immediate cause of the Saturday night attack was the accidental shooting of a herder by a policeman at Ungwan Wakili Junction, the burning of herders' motorcycles and the mob action which followed."

He, however, added that by the time the Troops of Operation Safe Haven mobilised to the village to repel the attack, about 16 to 17 persons were already killed, with seven persons wounded. The wounded were taken to Zonkwa General Hospital for treatment.

"Also worthy of note is that, after after a policeman accidentally shot and injured a herder and a colleague at the checkpoint at Ungwan Wakili Junction, a mob action occurred in Ungwan Wakili.

"While the police evacuated the area, a crowd of locals and herders gathered at the scene, and in the confrontation that followed, one local was killed. Two motorcycles belonging to herders were burnt, while the attack on Ungwan Wakili village occurred a few hours later," the security source explained.

Meanwhile, the local government authorities have imposed a 24-hour curfew in the affected communities to prevent further breakdown of law and order.

Leadership

Related story: 25 people killed by Islamist militants in Nigeria