[size=18pt]Nigerian pharmacists find opportunity on Detroit's West Side[/size]


DALLAS—Adaeze Moghalu's pharmacy here is a fortress, where prescriptions and cash are exchanged through a tiny slot in a Plexiglas shield. She beefed up security after a doctor was killed in a robbery nearby and her store was invaded by addicts wielding chisels and craving narcotics.

"They came through the walls twice, and through the roof once," said the immigrant pharmacist, who has run the Lord And A pharmacy on Martin Luther King Boulevard on Dallas's south side since 1998. A member of the Ibo tribe from Nigeria's Anambra state, Ms. Moghalu holds a pharmacy degree as well as a nursing degree. And she is a certified midwife.

Ms. Moghalu is part of a growing entrepreneurial class, too, one of more than 6,000 Nigerian immigrants working as pharmacists in the U.S. Hundreds work for leading chains like CVS Caremark Corp. and Rite-Aid Corp. Others handle prescriptions in hospitals and clinics. Nigerian pharmacists also fill college faculties. Sunny Ohia was dean of the University of Houston's College of Pharmacy. Today he's provost at Texas Southern University in Houston.

But many, like Ms. Moghalu, have found opportunity operating pharmacies in urban, high-crime neighborhoods where few big chains or other independent pharmacies do business. "Almost all the growth is coming from Africa," said Nnodum Iheme, director of the Nigerian Association of Pharmacists and Pharmaceutical Scientists of the Americas.

Pharmacy owners say barriers to enter the business are low, as little as $50,000 in start-up costs if drug suppliers will issue inventory on credit. Crime is a risk, but such areas are often under-served and many residents are on Medicaid, which pays its bills rapidly.

"You have to go where the need is, you can't be afraid," says Emmanuel Ezirim, who opened the Central Point Pharmacy on the west side of Columbus, Ohio, in 2009.


Nigerian pharmacies are carving out an ethnic niche—particularly in African-American and Latino neighborhoods—not unlike those built by previous generations of immigrants, from the Chinese dominance of the laundry business beginning in the 1850s to Gujarati immigrants—ethnic Indians largely from east Africa—who gained prominence in the lodging industry in the 1970s.

Besides Texas, Nigerian pharmacists' associations are active in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Tampa, Fla., and Washington, D.C.

A decade ago, Nigerians helped the U.S. meet a looming shortage of pharmacists, along with immigrants from South Korea, India and Southeast Asia. Many of the Nigerians were eager to flee the corruption that plagues their industry in Africa, where markets are rife with counterfeit medicines that are both public-health scourges and profit-killers for honest vendors.

One result was a surge of Nigerians earning pharmacy degrees in America, and finding work at major chains. Just from the employees she sees, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., recruiter Sharon Early estimates that between 200 and 300 Nigeria-born employees work in Wal-Mart pharmacies in Texas alone.

Nigerians have been a big part of growth in the number of black pharmacists. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the number of black pharmacists in the U.S. more than doubled to more than 24,000 in 2009 from 8,500 in 2000. The total number of U.S. pharmacists hit 267,000 last year, up from 224,000 in 2000.

Mr. Iheme, director of the Nigerian pharmacists' association, says the data probably undercount Nigerian participation. The trade group lists more than 6,700 names in its database.
[PHARMonline]

Last month, the group held its fourth annual convention in Dallas. Dining on steaming platters of spicy beef and cassava paste, or fufu, members also attended seminars on financing acquisitions of existing pharmacies, or how to build one from scratch. The group demonstrated some buying clout, too, announcing a partnership with the vendor H.D. Smith, which outsources such back-office tasks as inventory and billing.

Conference attendees learned this is a good time for pharmacists who long to be self-employed to think about striking out on their own. Owner-operators across the country have an average age of 59, Jimmy Neal, a vice president for strategy of Cardinal Pharmaceutical, a distributor based in Sacramento, Calif., told one audience. "Sixty per cent of all independent [not chain] pharmacies will change hands in the next ten years," he said.

Nigerian-owned pharmacies in Detroit have a reputation for adapting to a challenging environment. Tony Akande's People Pharmacy on Schaefer Highway is slightly larger than a telephone booth.

It is inside a Plexiglas cube Mr. Akande built on a square of floor he leases from the liquor store that surrounds his pharmacy. A mile away on Greenfield Road, Phid Onwuzurike built his Ashton Natural Drugs inside a Marathon gas station and car wash.

"The idea was survivability," said Mr. Onwuzurike, who opened the gas station to drive customer traffic to his pharmacy.

Of course, doing business in crime-plagued areas can lead to problems besides break-ins. Oliver Obi was arrested in 2004 after Drug Enforcement Administration agents learned his tiny pharmacy inside a liquor store on Detroit's Seven Mile Road was the U.S.'s third-largest dispenser of hydrocodone, a painkiller commonly sold as Vicodin. The Nigerian immigrant pleaded guilty to providing 2.5 million tablets of Vicodin and other drugs to street dealers and drew a five-year prison sentence.

"I made a mistake," said the 55-year-old Mr. Obi shortly after his release from prison. The naturalized U.S. citizen said he hoped to practice pharmacy again after completing probation.

Mr. Ezirim, the Columbus pharmacist, learned to fill prescriptions working for CVS and a smaller chain, Mediserve Pharmacy Services LLC, after earning his pharmacy degree from Ohio State University. He says he saw an opportunity when "the big chains up and left" the area and he found a strip mall to open his own shop. While working full-time at Mediserve, he also worked as a weekend "floater" for Rite-Aid Corp. in rural Ohio before returning to his own storefront. He says he installed his own fixtures to save on construction costs.

Mr. Ezirim's business is now thriving. He fills 450 prescriptions a week, he says, meeting the industry's average of $13 net profit per order. He has added one technician. "I'm the big dog now," he says with a laugh.


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More grease to the elbows of these folks. Unlike their unscrupulous compatriots in Aba and elsewhere in the South-East who are busy honing their kidnapping skills and causing misery for the people, these good ambassadors are making giant strides in the US for family, self and country.

Nice! Nigerians dey try small small sha. I particularly like this guy. . .im get sense nor be small. Smart idea to open a gas station near his pharmacy to attract customers

Ileke-IdI:

A mile away on Greenfield Road, Phid Onwuzurike built his Ashton Natural Drugs inside a Marathon gas station and car wash.

"The idea was survivability," said Mr. Onwuzurike, who opened the gas station to drive customer traffic to his pharmacy.

But they should also try to build some at home. That's what my aunty wants to do. God bless her.

We have Nigerians suffering from fake drugs that the US tests on them. Wont it be nice to have Nigerian pharmacist in America having her own center in Nigeria with certified drugs?