Unlike her, understandably, glamorous, destination 50th birthday party, Chinelo Bob-Osamor, lawyer and media practitioner, had a quiet 51st birthday celebration. Last year, she ferried family and select friends to Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A to celebrate her attainment of the golden age with a party organised in her honour by her younger sister. But this year, she would not be persuaded into rolling out the drums for being alive and healthy for adding a year. She only consented to a small get-together where prayers and well wishes poured in endlessly. Married to Bob Osamor, the Deputy Director General, Nigerian Law School, Enugu Campus, Chinelo is also a philanthropist and founder of the Chike Okagbue Foundation (COF) established to honour the memory of her father.
The foundation grants full scholarships to ten students for secondary education every year. She came to prominence however with the popular television programme, Healthwise, designed primarily as a talkshow to educate her viewers on various ailments; their management and cure while inviting consultants in various fields of medicine to give expert opinion on health issues. The target was to prevent avoidable deaths. Much later, the programme morphed into “Discourse-with-Chineloâ€, also a public enlightenment drive with a wider focus, which in addition to health issues, x-rays other issues.
