She started her career at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in Nigeria, where she did her training as a nurse and as a nurse mid-wife. After graduating as a registered nurse in 1982 and as a mid-wife in 1984, she briefly worked at the same institution before migrating to the United States to join her husband in 1986. While at LUTH, she encouraged women to use birth control to space their children and stand up for themselves against a male domineering society.