On Thursday, 25 April 2024, the Technical Director of the Mixed Martial Arts Federation, Shihan (Pharm.) Victor Akhimien, visited Pharmanews Limited, following his return from the All Africa Games recently held in Ghana, where he served as coach of the Nigerian Mixed Martial Arts Team that won one gold, one silver and two bronze medals. In this interview with Patrick Iwelunmor, he talks about his readiness to help young pharmacists interested in the mixed martial arts sport to developMartial Arts their skills while still pursuing their career in the pharmaceutical space. EXCERPTS.
What was your contribution to the performance of the mixed martial arts team you accompanied to the just concluded All Africa Games?
I am the Technical Director for the Nigerian Mixed Martial Arts Federation which is affiliated to the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation. My contribution was basically to organize training programmes that would shore up the talents of Team Nigeria. Last year, we had a national championship among other championships. I have about 20 athletes who are top in the different categories of the mixed martial arts. When it was time to go for the All Africa Games in Ghana, I was mandated to get a smaller team of four athletes for the event and I was able to do that. I was the only coach that took the team to Ghana after the other coach was dropped based on FG’s regulations. Eventually, the team did well in Ghana with one gold, one silver and two bronze medals. This feat came through good training regimes and my sound technical input. Now that we are back from Ghana, I have been working to organize more trainings while recruiting more coaches too. We are also preparing for another world championship in Namibia. All things being equal and with the support of government, we shall be taking a larger team of Nigerian mixed martial artists to that event.
After your reception by the PSN, do you have any plans to mentor young pharmacists who may be passionate about mixed martial arts?
Martial arts for me is a way of life. It is a sport that people really misunderstand. It is a premium sport where people learn to develop their credibility, mind and body. It gives them a can-do spirit. Martial arts is what made me what I am today. It has made me more focused in any other thing I want to do. I was the first pharmacy student that did karate in University of Benin. I started martial arts when I was ten years old until I got to the University of Benin where I rose to become the head coach for karate. My plan is to encourage pharmacy students not to just become bookworms but to also engage in sports. If you are into sports, you will do a lot of things. You will be able to love school and withstand its pressure. I was able to handle a lot of pressure in school and I never missed my karate classes. I also never missed my church choir rehearsals. Those were the things that kept me going. I encourage young pharmacists to engage in many things in the university because those are actually the things that would make them special other than being pharmacists. In my own case, what has made me popular in the pharmaceutical landscape are my other talents. I plan to hold classes in different universities. I also plan to hold a national seminar which pharmacy students can attend and understand the fundamentals of martial arts. We also have some old pharmacists who are martial artists and I hope to collaborate with them in my training programmes. One of them is the MD of Alpha Pharmacy, Pharm. Sir Ike Onyechi. Onyechi was a brown belt holder in his heydays in school. Even the PSN President, Professor Cyril Usifoh is interested in martial arts. Many people in the pharmaceutical industry are really showing interest in martial arts. I also plan to give honorary black belts to some pharmacists who have contributed immensely to society.
What do you really benefit from martial arts?
For me, martial arts is a way of expressing oneself, in the sense that when you train regularly, you would know that you need to do more to improve your fitness level. The exercise involved in martial arts is not about building muscles. It is a sport of all sports. It is a way of life that makes you believe in yourself. Believing in oneself helps one to go a long way in life and that is what martial arts does. Many people have been bullied away from their careers. For such people, if they don’t do martial arts, they may never realise themselves in life. Martial arts is one thing that kept motivating me to believe that it is good to be different. However, being different requires a lot of discipline. When you see retired military personnel who are now governors or business leaders, you will always see that air of discipline from the many years of military training and regimented lifestyle. That kind of lifestyle is applicable to martial arts which gives you a disciplined and focused mindset. Somehow, you are even perceived as a superhuman who can work with anybody because of that outstanding level of discipline. A martial artist is emotionally intelligent with good anger management skills. I have a martial arts academy where big men in their fifties and sixties come to train with me, sometimes with their spouses and children. It is also a family bonding system. For me, martial arts is a way of life that has many benefits as I have mentioned earlier.
Scientifically speaking, how has pharmacy made you a better martial artist?
Pharmacy has made me a better martial artist in the sense that I have become a multifaceted person. The wide scope of pharmacy has shaped my perspective about life. It has made me see life from a multidimensional perspective and perhaps that is the singular reason I am so many things in one person. I am a pharmacist, a martial artist, a cartoonist, a musician, an actor and a voice over artist. All these owe their inspiration to the dynamism of the pharmacy profession. In pharmacy, there is no room for mistakes. This principle has also made me a very careful and strategic person. When other professionals make a mistake, they can kill just one person but when a pharmacist makes a mistake, he can kill an entire village. The methodic nature of pharmacy has also shaped my life as a martial artist because it has taught me that I cannot just lose my temper anyhow, knowing the damage this could do to society. You can imagine a martial artist getting angry and engaging in a fight. The outcome will be catastrophic. So, pharmacy has actually trained me to be disciplined and strategic at the same time. It has given me the platform to understand myself better, in terms of my strengths and weaknesses. I have always carried out a SWOT analysis of myself and this has helped me approach life from a multidimensional perspective.
Your advice to young pharmacists.
We are in an era when creativity, focus and discipline play very strong roles in people’s lives. Talent alone is no longer enough. Young pharmacists should know that they can still practice their profession while utilizing their other talents. We have actors, like Funke Akindele, who are lawyers and are making the profession very attractive. We also have Kenneth Okonkwo, another actor who is making waves in the legal profession. These actors have inspired a lot of young people in the Nollywood industry to pursue and nurture their other passions and talents, respectively. We have governors who are medical doctors. They have inspired a lot of young pharmacists to aspire to leadership and administrative positions. I want to encourage young pharmacists to pursue what they love while sticking to their profession. I am open to helping them nurture their talents, dreams and aspirations. I do have talk shows for pharmaceutical companies. I talk to sales representatives to make them better sale persons because I also started as one. I have done sales at the highest level and have covered a lot of targets. That job exposed me to other sectors beyond the pharmaceutical industry such as telecoms, banking, FMCG and so on. I encourage young pharmacists to use their skills because any pharmacists that has other talents will always be interesting to people. This is what has made the difference in my life.
