Life is worthwhile if you learn. Life is worthwhile if you try. Life is worthwhile if you stay. And life is worthwhile if you care.”

These are the words Victor Ogomebunam Ekwueme lives by everyday.

After battling with depression for a while following a loss of most of his eyesight to a rare condition known as Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), Victor keeps learning, trying, staying and caring.
Victor Ekwueme is an IT Consultant at Super Digital Highways Ltd, a Lagos-based system IT company. In his five years at the company till date, he has helped various clients install and modify the software they use for their day to day operations, using Python.
His deep understanding of the programming language has also led him to partner with Python Nigeria and WAVE Academies to create a programme that would train kids of 13 years and above on the concept of Python.

“I am teaching the WAVE Academies staff first on data analysis. Starting from August, we will begin training children from 13 and above generally on Python. With the way the world is going, they might need a little bit of knowledge of Python even if they might not eventually go into IT,” Victor tells Techpoint.


Victor’s story of rising above his visual impairment to continue in his career path as a software consultant and trainer is one that is very inspiring. He shares his journey to discovering tech, living with an eye condition and working despite his constraint with us.
An introduction to computer science
Victor was born into a family of scholars. His father is the renowned professor of music and Nollywood actor, Laz Ekwuemeand his mother was a professor of music education.

“My dad was actually the first professor of Music in Nigeria, West Africa even,” he recalls proudly with a wide smile on his face. “We lived in the University of Lagos (Unilag) growing up. So I grew up being one of the professors’ children.”
When Victor was five years old, he moved to the US when his mum had to do her PhD. He returned to Nigeria five years later and enrolled at the International School Lagos where he completed his secondary school education.

“My eyesight was not bad then so I went around like every normal person. But when I was seven years old, I noticed that I couldn’t see properly in the evening, from around 6 PM or 7 PM.”
As a young boy, Victor’s interest in computers started with playing games on his father’s computer. Then he went further to learn DOS commands when his dad’s personal assistant gave him a diskette containing the commands.
After completing his secondary school education, he enrolled at the Unilag Computer Centre for a diploma in Data Processing.

“That year, I learnt different programming languages, word processing, system analysis and design as well as communication skills. This paved my way into computer science as my choice of course when I gained admission into Unilag in 1998.”
After bagging a degree in computer science from the University of Lagos in 2002 and completing his compulsory National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) year, he enrolled at the Nottingham University, England in 2004 for a master’s degree in Information Technology.

“I actually have two master’s degrees. I got the second one in Intelligence Computational Systems in 2009 from the University of Dundee, Scotland.”

Retinitis Pigmentosa hit and depression followed

Fast forward to 2012, Victor began working at C2G Consulting, a Lagos-based SAP company, after he returned to Nigeria in 2011. While working at the company, he noticed that his eyesight was deteriorating and his productivity at work took a major hit.

“I realized that I couldn’t see my laptop screen and stuff on paper anymore. That kind of scared me a bit and it affected my productivity. My doctors in England told me that something like this ‘may’ happen. That the problem might deteriorate as I got older but I was hoping it wouldn’t happen.”

In 2012, he was advised to resign. And he slipped into depression shortly after.
“In November 2013, I went back to England for a medical checkup and I was told that there’s no cure for my condition but it could potentially get worse. So they gave me some medication to retard its deterioration.”
Still depressed, as a result of feeling helpless due to his condition, Victor returned to Nigeria not knowing what to do with his life.

“It was tiring for me to just stay at home and do nothing but feel sorry for myself. As a Christian, I went into fasting and prayer. I prayed for strength. Not long after, an old friend of mine walked into my house and offered me a job at his company.”
That company, Super Digital Highways Ltd is where Victor currently works. Getting back to work without his eyesight wasn’t easy. He had a lot to catch up on and he had to be very dependent on other people to get things done. He got an intern to help him when he needed any assistance.

“I could still type, I had been typing since I was 17 years old but I had forgotten how to code. That’s the thing about depression, it retards your mind in the sense that you forget what you have learnt and if you’re not careful and remain in that state, it gets even worse.”
“Anyway, I had to take some courses online to refresh my memory. I went back to introductory courses in computer science before it all started coming back.”

https://techpoint.africa/2019/07/31/victor-ekwueme-feature/

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