I’ve buried bishops, Rev Fathers and pastors –Kevin Chukwumaobi, APAMS boss

I’m Sir Kevin Chukwumaobi, Managing Director/CEO of Amuche Pharmacy and Medical Services Limited, which is widely known as APAMS. It is based in Onitsha, Anambra state. The major work I do is to bury dead bodies and package funerals of all categories.
Long before I got involved in handling burials, I read Mass Communication, but later became a patent medicine dealer after undergoing training for four years, between 1988 and 1992, on how to run the business. Then in 2002 I established my own pharmacy shop and employed a pharmacist and some nurses. I was supplying drugs to Nnewi Teaching Hos¬pital and other shops around Onitsha. Between 1992 and 1996, I went to Cameroon and began importing shoes, wristwatches, bags and other materials from Dubai into Nigeria. It was while I was running the import business that I got interested in rendering funeral services, by renting out my hearse for the transport of corpses for burial. In Nigeria, people wrongly refer to hearse as ambulance. An ambulance carries a living person who is sick or in medical emergency, while a hearse is for carrying a dead body for burial.
During those early days, I used to park the hearse in front of my pharmacy and sometimes I would drive it myself. Then from 1996, I started packaging funerals. Before I started doing that, I had been reading journals and funeral catalogues such as Happy Hours. I even attend¬ed seminars to prepare myself for the business. Then from 2002 to 2006 I added other services like providing pallbearers to carry the corpses. In fact today, we offer 20 services related to funerals. In 2006, I started using helicopter to carry dead bodies within Nigeria.
When I was fully involved in the pharmaceutical business, I had a vision in which I saw myself conveying dead bodies; that was why I bought the ambulance, and began driving it myself. From there I started adding some other things that would add glamour to the business as it began to grow. In 2002 I shut down the pharmacy business finally and went into full funeral packaging. Since then I have added oth¬er things like the supply of caskets, guards and band group. That is what you see now through¬out the South East.
When I started offering burial services in 1992 nobody wanted to associate with me. People called me all sorts of names; some asked me, ‘A young man like you, is this what you will do to get married? Nobody wanted to talk to me. Even my landlord, where I had my pharmacy and parked my ambulance became scared of me and used to warn me from day to day. Sometimes I would park my ambulance along the road but I was determined because I knew where I was going.
Yes, so far I have buried above 15,000, because I do know that we move more than 40 dead bodies every week.
The service I render is not the same. It is categorized to suit different classes of people. We have the one for the people who can only afford N250,000 to N350,000. There are also ones for N1 to 2 million and then N10 million. We have casket of N100,000 and we have that of 1 million naira, so it depends on what you want, because what you want determines what you pay. We have a helicopter and English chariot. Just few months ago, I used chariot and heli¬copter for the funeral of one woman at Ukpor. We conveyed the body to Ukpor and landed at the central school there. And used the chariot to take her corpse to the family home.
My wife is the daughter of a former NITEL manager. When the father died, the family wanted to give him a befitting burial and they approached my company. It was there that I saw my wife. What happened was that her sis-ter arranged for us to meet, to discuss the funer¬al arrangement. Later she left and asked the sister to continue the discussion. She began asking me about my business and I told her that God has been saving my life. I discussed my business with her. In the course of the interaction, I proposed and she accepted to marry me, but her immediate family refused except her elder sister, who was then a Senior Special Assistant to the Governor of the State on Oil and Gas. She supported the marriage and told her people that if it were the man she saw during the burial, he was a good man and they should not look at his business or what he is doing and convinced oth¬ers to support the marriage. Eventually, the family agreed and we got married. I continued with my business with her and at a time I realized that my wife is not scared about the business; I also realized that she truly loves me and my business; we had a low-key traditional mar¬riage, because I was afraid that people would not come, because they were scared of me. But I was surprised that during the church wedding, all the big shots, all the wealthy people whose relations’ funerals I had organized, attended the wedding and I said, ‘Oh, so people appreciate me like this?’ I was impressed, so I married her in the course of the business.
I must confess that I had some girlfriends then who were willing to marry me, but my problem was that I was looking for a graduate and a pharmacist, who I wanted to manage my pharmacy. I even went to Nnamdi Azikiwe Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, to look for a wife, but I was not successful because some of the people I saw were older than the age bracket I wanted. I thank God that it was the same period that I was looking for a wife to marry that this my wife came, although she was not a phar¬macist, she read English Language at the University of Port Harcourt, so I said, ‘okay, since it was not my destiny to marry a pharmacist, I should go ahead and marry her. After all she is a graduate, and we have managed this business for 23 years.
Today, everybody is now my friend. When I buried my elder brother, people came out en mass to support me. You need to have seen the crowd; that was the first time I invited people to my hometown. That was also when I tested my popularity as well. Nobody is scared of me again. Because of my success, many people now want to go into funeral business. When they come to me for advice, I encourage them. In fact, one of them is a medical doctor near my shop, and he wants to go into the funeral business.
The juju I use for my business is Jesus. Jesus is my juju. So I don’t know of any other thing. Show me that dead body or spirit that does not want to go home. Just call APAMS and we will come, carry the dead body peacefully and take it home. I’ve not had any encounter with a dead body that refused to go home. I hardly have mechanical problems in my vehicles; that is the major problem people have and I always have two vehicles in the convoy, so if one breaks downs I will transfer to the other vehicle and continue the journey. I’ve carried a native doctor, who was the chairman of native doctors in Anambra State to Ogidi, his home town. I carried the corpse personally to Ogidi for burial. We even entered one bush, drove round one big tree. As they were doing their incantation, I was doing my own incantation too and after that I went to the place and dropped the dead body. I have carried the body of Nweke Ogbodo, former national chairman of National Union of Road Transport Workers, (NURTW) who everybody believed was deadly. We took him home for burial. I’ve buried bishops, pas¬tors, and Rev Fathers. Who else have we not buried?
Yes, every spirit obeys APAMS. Any spirit that doesn’t want to go home call APAMS. Re¬ally this business is not for those whose vehi¬cles are not sound. That is the secret. So if you are conveying a body and your vehicle breaks down on the road you don’t have an option than to tell the relation of deceased that the body has refuses to go home because if you tell them the truth they may beat you up or do you any other thing. You know they will not be happy to be stranded on the road, so within these period, you will rally around to repair your vehicle and after which you now tell them to add money or to bring one item or the other and the driver would use it to do one incantation and tell them to enter the vehicle to continue their journey. So with that, the owner of the body would have patience with the driver of the hearse and at the same time appreciate him with more money. That was what the hearse drivers were doing to deceive their clients. I abolished that when I was the chairman of Ambulance Drivers Association.
People wanted to make our clients provide yam, fowl and hot drinks, instead I suggested that we should be giving what is called driver’s right and we agreed on N1,000 naira.
When it comes to making a funeral glamor¬ous, elegant and memorable, we have every¬thing from A-Z. If you need criers, we provide them. We give six but if you want more than six, we oblige. If you need six to cry for you in one burial, just pay N150, 000 so that after crying, they will have enough to eat and regain their energy.
In olden days, the death rate was low, but to¬day it is high, because people die in hundreds and thousands and if you wait for somebody to die before you build a casket, that means you won’t bury the body with casket. Even in my shop, the ones we have are not enough because the demand is more than the supply. If you go to my shop now, you see that there is scarcity, because the demand for caskets is more than the supply.
I have 350 to 400 permanent staff and over 700 casual or contract staff scattered in all the branches. We have the best costumes and I even have a tailor here who sews the costumes.