Rev. Prof. Peter Nwangwu

Prof Nwangwu came to the United States in 1972 to attend the University of Nebraska at Lincoln where he made his mark by becoming the first student at the University of Nebraska to earn his bachelor’s degree in two years. He went on to earn a master's degree from the department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy as well as the Department of Pharmacodynamics and Toxicology in 1976. Prof Nwangwu made history again as the first student at the University of Nebraska to earn his Pharm. D and Ph. D simultaneously. He was only the third person in the United States to achieve this feat. After a successful career in the private sector, he later went on to earn his Doctorate in Theology in 2006 and Doctorate in Divinity in 2008 from the University of North Carolina College of Theology. He was a member of Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society and the National Scholastic Honor Society.   

My father had over 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development serving as the Director of Clinical Research and Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Florida A&M University before he went on to serve as Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at St John's University in Queens, N.Y. Following his tenure in the field of academia, he once again made history by becoming the first black man to own a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in the state of Texas when he served as President and CEO of Punlabs Quality Products, Inc and Ebony Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, Inc. He eventually moved on to serve as the Chairman of the Board to companies of various fields in the public sector.

My father was a highly focused individual with the vision to see problems others overlooked, the initiative to see real change happen, and a youthful spirit that gave him the vigor of men half his age. He had a deeply reverent fear of God and always said the single most important factor in his success was the grace of God. For my father, the glory was not his, but God’s, and he made sure anyone who heard his story knew it. He was a prayerful man, dutiful, always ordering his steps to follow God, and using the story of his life to give testimony to the Lord’s faithfulness.

My father was a firm believer in the passage of the Greatest Commandment, Matthew 22:35-40, best surmised as, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.’ As Jesus Christ our Lord said, all the laws and commandments from our prophets are hinged upon those two laws. My father was a firm believer in that. He was a serious man, but his heart was huge for the good in people and soft for those in need. He was always eager to serve as a mentor. Man or woman, young or old, for spiritual guidance, for educational guidance, for professional guidance, for personal guidance, no matter what, my father was there for all of God’s children. In his time in America, my father helped over 65 individuals make their way to the United States in the hopes of getting a better life for their families. 

My father had respect for his country of residence but his love for his home was profound. He shared a sense of kinship with his people and, like any good countrymen, felt a shared sense of responsibility for his people. Throughout our lives he would tell us how his heart would bleed when he thought about all the injustice and corruption infesting his beautiful country. He would tell us how much it hurt him that his people suffered under the thumb of disingenuous government officials too busy stuffing their pockets with the nation’s wealth to govern the nation. Feeling it his duty to see something change, he acted. 

In 2010, my father founded Fanafi Worldwide (Find A Need And Fill It), a corporation centered on finding needs within communities and partnering with local community organizations to sell these products. With unemployment rates at tragically high levels, it was his hope to give his countrymen this chance at true and sustainable wealth generation. He developed a plan that would keep this wealth circulating within these often-forgotten communities and give the opportunity for them to do for themselves what the government refuses to do. He went on to create a nonprofit foundation in 2017, FIGA (Foundation for Integrity in Governance in Africa), a grassroots organization focused on building a corrupt free democracy in Nigeria with Psalm 34:14 as the mission objective, ‘Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.’ He simultaneously compiled, edited, and authored a series of essays from experts in all fields pertaining to the problems facing Nigeria. My father and these experts worked together closely to develop a plan to save Nigeria from the miasma of corruption in the hopes of preventing travesties like the one that occurred on the Lekki Toll Gate in October 2020. Together they publishing the book by the name of We the People of Nigeria and he went on to establish a new political party in Nigeria by the same name, WTP, We the People, using this book as a manual for the party’s platform. 

For a man who was rarely ever sick, his untimely passing was a shock to say the least. However, our family has been overwhelmed by the testimonies that have already and continue to pour in. Hearing so many other people talk about what a great man my father was and how much he meant to them means more to my family than one could ever hope to express through words. My father was a genuinely good man who deserves to be remembered for the work he did here. He was human, he had his flaws, but he always followed his heart and his heart always followed God. 

The blessings he received in his life came from the hard work life instilled in him and his siblings from their upbringing, the character he developed as he grew into a man, and the endless pursuit of the Lord my grandparents instill in all their children. Yet beyond the magnitude of his professional accomplishments, the personal accomplishment of being a man who did good in the world for the sake of seeing good in the world, that is the legacy that speaks truest to the man my father was in life. His legacy of grateful service to the Lord is something that will be remembered beyond my family and as long as my father’s memory is alive, as long as his mission is still being fought for by us still here on the Earth, he will still be with us. 

Thank You