Naija's Masters bodybuilders (II): Uche Uwakaneme

Missed the first episode of this mini-series? Click HERE !

                                                                                         **************************************************

Born on 4 September 1958, Mr Uche Uwakaneme is a gym instructor, fitness consultant and Nigerian bodybuilding legend. A native of Arochukwu Local Government Area in Abia State, South-East Nigeria, Mr Uwakaneme began his journey to bodybuilding stardom by starting out as a promising track and field athlete in his teenage years while still in secondary school. Later on, in the year 1984, he moved to Nigeria's commercial nerve centre Lagos, where he had been offered admission to study at the Yaba College of Technology. This was where he actually took to the gym for the first time. Here, Mr Uwakaneme began to hone his physique, which had reached an appreciable level of development by the early 1990s, when he made his first sojourn out of the country, travelling to the Netherlands. It was there that his career picked up. "I never got to contest in any championship in Nigeria. I had wanted to, but there was no functioning national-based bodybuilding organization during that period to have organized such." Having found himself in a clime with access to better facilities and organizational structures than he left back home, Mr Uwakaneme progressed his career, firstly enrolling as a member of the NBBF (Netherlands Bodybuilding Federation) in 1998, before making his stage debut in April of the following year, in a district championship held in the city of Gorinchem. This contest brought Mr Uwakaneme to the limelight on the Dutch scene as he won a 'first runners-up' medal. He was subsequently selected to partake in the Night of Dutch champions, the biggest IFBB-sanctioned event in the Netherlands, held in Amsterdam later that year, making history as the first Nigerian athlete to do so, having competed in the 80-85kg class. Mr Uwakaneme then decided that he had had enough of competitive bodybuilding, having become one of the best physical culture athletes in the country, and he retired from active participation in the sport in the year 2005, when he returned to Nigeria, settling in Lagos. Since then, he has worked as a fitness instructor, training clients at the DnB gym located within the Omotoye Estate in the Agege neighbourhood of the city. The competitive phase of his career now ended, Mr Uwakaneme began a new phase as a consultant, training and encouraging young and upcoming athletes for optimised results. In the year 2009, he met with Mr Stephen Okolie-Odene, who was on the verge of floating a new national bodybuilding championship called "Mr Flex Nigeria", and the pair have been working together to develop the game in the country ever since. In addition, Mr Uwakaneme has recently floated the 'Pro-Fitness hub', a fitness and gym consultancy, and is currently working on a project. He has graciously agreed to become a part-time columnist on the NBD Blog, and you shall be reading about this new project in subsequent posts!

Mr Uwakaneme can be contacted via email: uchekanu302@gmail.com, Twitter and Facebook.

The NBD