Anselm Adodo


Adodo Anselm Gbenga is a Nigerian scholar who is a pioneer of Alternative medicine in Africa. He is also Benedictine monk and priest of the Roman Catholic Church in Edo state Nigeria. He founded Nigeria’s first Alternative medicine and research laboratory enterprise in Nigeria known as Pax Herbal Clinic and Research Laboratories in 1997.
He started the herbal enterprise as a little herbal clinic venture in Ewu Monastery meant to offer herbal remedy to common ailments like cough and malaria to nearby villagers. Successes with treated patients meant information about the nascent herbal clinic at the monastery quickly spread to surrounding towns and beyond in a short space of time.
Adodo joined the Ewu Monastery in 1987 where he continues to live, pray, work, and study as a monk and an Alternative Medicine practitioner. As a writer, he has written several books on Alternative Medicine, Nutrition and Health, and Epidemiology.

Early life and career

Adodo was born in his family home to a Yoruba family in Akure, Ondo state of Nigeria. His father Adebayo Adodo is from the Oba-Ile axis of Akure, a prominent academician and wealthy entrepreneur owned one of the biggest frozen fish warehouse in Akure in the 1970s. His mother Mary Omodun Adodo is from the Falodun royal family in Akure known for their vast cocoa plantations.

Family and Personal Life

Adodo is the third of five children of his parents. Bankole Adodo, Funke Adodo, Anselm Adodo, Bandele Adodo, and Omotola Adodo are all siblings of same parents. Adebayo Adodo was the son of Adesida, a prominent Akure businessman. Mrs Mary Adodo is the daughter Peter falodun.

Education and Monastic Journey

In 1979, Adodo joined the St. Thomas Aquinas College Akure to begin his secondary school education. By the year 1985, he had successfully completed his secondary school education and was awarded a West African school certificate. When he visited Ewu Monastery in 1987, it was the peace and tranquility of the natural environment that really struck him. Finally, in November 1987, he abandoned his university admission in order to join the monastery.
As a monk of Ewu Monastery, he obtained a Higher Diploma in Scholastic Philosophy from Ewu Monastery studium of Philosophy in 1992. Thereafter, Adodo went on to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in Enugu State Nigeria, to further his academic career and it was there he studied till 1995 before he was award a Bachelor of Art in Religious Studies. His next academic effort was with Duquesne University, Pennsylvania, USA starting in 1995 until 1997 where he was awarded a master's degree Systematic Theology. Also, from 2015 he studied at University of Benin which earned him a Ph.D in Medical Sociology by 2017. Da vinci Institute, South Africa also awarded him a Ph.D 2015 for his doctoral studies which he started in 2012.
He is an adjunct professor at Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria and is also Chief Executive Officer at Paxherbals and director of Ofure Integral Research and Development Initiative.

Alternative Medicine

Philosophy

Adodo prefers the term "African Medicine" to "Traditional Medicine". He defines African medicine as a system of healing grounded in an African world view, culture, and accumulated beliefs and practices, which proffers solutions to physical and spiritual ailments through the use of herbs and other plants. African medicine, he believes, is founded on indigenous, biological, and medico-spiritual theories and concept of the human body; the role of the individual as a member of the community; and their relationship with the community, with the environment and with nature.

Background

In the early 1990s, Adodo undertook his first study on how people survive based on what they have: indigenous knowledge. Traveling around Nigeria at the time, he was amazed by what he observed. He saw native traditional healers and how they struggled but also how they healed and cured people. Adodo said, he felt called to preserved their knowledge. They were not documenting their knowledge and what they know was too valuable to lose.
He made a commitment to start documenting herbal remedies. Adodo said he explained to the traditional healers he encountered that this was the only way their knowledge would survive. The time had come to move indigenous knowledge from implicit knowledge, passed from one generation to the next orally, to explicit knowledge that was documented and shared more widely. That in doing so, more people could build on it. Indigenous medicinal knowledge has a unique place in healing and well-being.

Honours

Adodo has written books which includes: