Once Upon a Life

This is the concluding part of the saga of a foreign medical doctor in America who was implicated in a crime he did not commit and escaped from the law to avoid a punishment he did not deserve. Six years later, amidst hardship in Nigeria, the fugitive returned to America to face the law in order to save his marriage to his American wife and offer a better life for his children. He was hardly released by the Federal Court when another battle to stay in America began with the Immigration and Naturalization Services, causing him to return to his home country where he developed into one of the most successful physicians. With doggedness he continued his battle with the INS while the government of NIgeria became another major battle to fight. Losing was no option and against all odds, he succeeded.

When Frank Fashina escaped the ghettos of Lagos to study medicine in America, he thought the opportunity guaranteed him a position of success in his life and society. Hardly had he become a medical doctor than a twist of fate tossed him into the hands of the law when he was implicated in a crime he did not commit. Losing hope in the American justice system, he fled to Nigeria, only to return to America in order to save his marriage to his American wife and to offer a better life for his children. He expected that the sacrifice would guarantee a better life for his family, but surprises awaited him in a convoluted pathway, even after winning his battle against the American government. As more trials and tribulations took turns to assail him, his faith and tenacity was put to test, but failure was not an option.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria on August 3, 1956 Frank Fashina was raised by his school teacher mother in the slums of the city and learned quite early that education was his ticket out of the ghettos. Applying hard work to his natural talents he took an early lead in his class as he reached out for the great escape into the stars. With providence in his part he won an academic scholarship to pursue a degree in medicine in the United States where he discovered that no two paths in the pathway of life are ever connected by a straight line. He continued with a working formula of hard work and prayers towards his goals. Within four months of his doctorate in medicine, in the wrong place and with the wrong company, he was arrested for a crime he knew nothing about and thus began a detour into a path that changed his life and brought out a different life from what he originally planned, fleeing from the law back to Nigeria, building a new carrier in his professional life, struggling for scarce opportunities in systems and societies bedeviled by discrimination against color, race, tribe and creed. Economic and family challenges soon occasioned his return to the US to face the law from which he had escaped, but it was to be a convoluted battle for a place as an immigrant. As he returned again to Nigeria he began to build a medical practice that became a reference point.