Editor’s Biography

Ike Mgbatogu is the founder and CEO of two health care companies Family Choice Healthcare Plus, LLC and Family Choice Home Healthcare Services, LLC and the Publisher and Editor-In-Chief of Onumba.com, reflecting a two-pronged entrepreneurship pursuit he embarked on after graduating from The Ohio University in the United States with a bachelor’s degree (BA) in political science and a master of administration in public administration (MPA) degree.

Mr. Mgbatogu is also the CEO and Chairman of JIM Africa Properties Nig. Ltd, a real estate company he established in 2024 to manage the acquisition of landed properties in Anambra state.  A fierce advocate of agriculture, he established Rose Farm Nig. Ltd. in 2023, currently operating a truncated scale of the farm with plans to move into a permanent location.

Before leaping into the world of entrepreneurship, however, Mr. Mgbatogu started out in the public service as a Health Researcher/Analyst for the great state of Ohio where he also served on the staff of the governor’s COVID-19 research and public information response team.

Mr. Mgbatogu’s background as a political and community reporter reflected eclectic beats, freelancing for a bevy of establishments notably The Ohio Call & Post, which is the largest African-American newspaper in Ohio owned by the legendary boxing promoter’s Don King Media Enterprises. His writings appeared weekly in the Cleveland.com, the online home of the Cleveland Plain Dealer as well as in a number of Black media outlets including The Michigan Citizen based in Detroit, Black Press USA of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), Columbusunderground.com and ThisWeek community Newspaper where he had a brief stint as a contributing reporter.

In 2003, while still a freelance writer, Mr. Mgbatogu followed his passion and established his own media organization. That move gave birth to Onumba.com ——- an online news, commentary and entertainment platform published by Onumba Communications Inc., later rebranded as Fawol Africa Media (FAM).

Mr. Mgbatogu, an unyielding stalwart advocate of pan-Africanism, in the mold of Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. DuBois, Thomas Sankara, Malcolm X, and Fela Kuti, has over the years established a reputation for being a straight-shooter visible in the audacity of his views, depth of his analysis and the delivery of his commentaries.

A prolific, hard-hitting, unapologetic and iconoclastic writer, Mr. Mgbatogu is also a progressive thinker contoured with a radical tilt. He feels a profound disdain for the corrupt and blasé posture of the Nigerian ruling elites in the face of the crumbling infrastructure, political disarray, bruising hardship, social and economic turmoil in the country.

In 2007, Mr. Mgbatogu was appointed by Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman to serve on the city’s New Americans Community Advisory Board. He received a plethora of community awards for his commitment and activities notably in the Haiti Earthquake Relief Mission and being a member of the 2010 Columbus Malcolm X Day planning committee, the first to honor the slain Black leader in the city. Onumba Communications (now Fawol Africa Media) received the Ujima community award from TAWI Family Village for ‘collective work and responsibility.’

Mr. Mgbatogu has interviewed a host of politicians, business leaders, community leaders and celebrities including former U.S. President Barack Obama, former Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, Black Enterprise publisher Earl G. Graves, Sr., former Liberia’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Milton Nathaniel Barnes, former Ghanaian Ambassador to the U.S. Fritz Kwabena Poku, former Ohio House of Representatives Democratic Leader Armond Budish, entertainment executive Russell Simmons, former Ohio State, NFL star and actor Eddie George and a lengthy cavalcade of political, diplomatic and community leaders and activists.

Mr. Mgbatogu’s work was profiled by the Columbus Dispatch, Alive Magazine, Ohio State University Lantern and Ohio Today. Some of his commentaries have been quoted in studies and lectures addressing issues of race, immigration and public service, notably in a keynote speech by former South African Minister for Public Service and Administration Geraldine Frazer-Moleketi.at an international conference on ways to improve public service in Africa.

My favorite quotes:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” The late great Black abolitionist Frederick Douglas

“The independence of Ghana is meaningless until it is linked to the total liberation of Africa.” The late great President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah

“My people are scared of the air around them, they always have an excuse not to fight for freedom.” The late great musician Fela Kuti 

 

Four behaviors that I fiercely abhor: Corruption, skin bleaching, mistreating/abusing house maids and gossip.

The end.