My Journey from Body Enhancement to Life Transformation
“I will never forget that moment. I cried for over an hour because I felt I had failed that woman. I felt we could have probably saved her life if we had come a few weeks earlier.” A couple of years back it would have been impossible to find her where fli
First, she aspired to be a flight attendant. Like a fleeting fancy, she thought of another aspiration. To the then bright-eyed youngster being a medical doctor was an inevitable path she must pass by all means. Well, even though she never became a medical practitioner, she has excelled as a pioneer of a medical field in Nigeria – plastic surgery – as she set up a body enhancement centre in 2001 under the company, Body Enhancement. She was just 27 when she took the bold step to encourage Nigerians to indulge in face-lift and other beauty-enhancing procedures. The country was taken by surprise but Modupe Ozolua has since moved on. But what made her to venture into a path not hitherto trodden? “Growing up in Nigeria, I saw many family members and friends’ mothers travelling to Europe to indulge in luxury spas and health farms. I knew Nigerian women and men would appreciate the opportunity to improve their physical appearance in the comfort of their own country with family and aides around to take care of them. Knowing those facts, I made some inquiries and got extremely positive feedback and thus proceeded to establish Body Enhancement Ltd in Nigeria,” she recalled. She hit the jackpot instantly and her fame rose like a meteor – there was no stopping her. Her passion and care for her clients were unparalleled as she made it a duty to be in the theatre during surgical procedures for the clients. ”I made sure the surgeon did what the client wanted. I would always ask the nurses and anaesthesiologists’ opinion on the results of the procedure before I gave approval for the procedure to end. If I didn’t feel we did what they client wanted, I wouldn’t allow the surgeon to stop working. Although it was very demanding, standing in the operating room for hours overseeing this, I had to do that to look after the client’s interest,” she stated with pride.
Even though – to date – most of those clients still consult her for surgeries, by 2003, Ozolua had shifted her focus to reconstructive surgery where she treated people with severe burns or similar lacerations that muddled their beauty. Ozolua, however, found herself an easy target for bad press. On more than one occasion, she was a victim of blackmail. She recalled an ugly incident where a Nigerian tabloid published defamatory stories about her every week because she refused to be ‘friends’ with the publisher. She even went as far as suing a magazine when the attacks became insufferable.
“All the various smear campaigns against me in a bid to blackmail me made me realise my business had put me in an ocean (fame) that required me to swim with bloodthirsty ‘sharks’. Things had to change. That’s why I shut them out as far back as 2005 and barely spoke to the press since then,” she said.
At the time Ozolua was enjoying what she knew how to do best, a new vista began to open before her. In the course of championing body enhancement surgeries, she often encountered indigent people that needed reconstructive surgery. One of them was a couple who sought her services after the wife suffered severe burns and lacerations from a fire accident. Unfortunately, they couldn’t afford to pay for the surgery.
Ozolua found herself making plans to launch a foundation that will provide financial assistance to the disadvantaged in need of her services, leading to the founding of a foundation – the Body Enhancement Annual Reconstructive Surgery (BEARS). When the foundation kicked off – within its first few months – it provided free corrective surgery to children born with birth defects within. The organisation is now known as ‘Empower 54’ following some changes in goals and objectives.
“Initially, it was called BEARS (Body Enhancement Annual Reconstructive Surgery) Foundation because it was the charity arm of my cosmetic surgery business, Body Enhancement Ltd. It was changed much later because our humanitarian activities had extended beyond reconstructive surgery and they were holding more than once annually. In addition, our foreign partners were confused by the acronym, BEARS, because they thought it was an animal conservative organisation saving the animal, bear!
“It was then shortened to Body Enhancement Foundation but my foreign board of directors advised we completely make it independent of Body Enhancement Ltd as it wasn’t a foundation