16. Your other statements about Prof Dike and Prof Njoku would be more relevant in a debate about academic achievement between the Igbo and a group of equally large size. In all honesty those two areas (history and botany) are not sufficiently challenging/difficult (in my opinion, but probably also to most other people studying the "hard" sciences) to the point where anyone could even make insinuations about any academic superiority by producing Ph.Ds in those areas before another group. I would only chalk that up to a population advantage, and like I said earlier, the Binis were initially behind in education in the colonial era, so it's surprising that Emovon was such an early Ph.D to begin with and that you have not listed anyone from Anioma who was the first in a whole academic field (not a sub-field) despite their educational head start of many years. I'm sure if you dig deep enough you can find someone, but it's surprising that you would have to do so despite your perspective on some sort of superiority in achievements. It's also quite telling that a Bini man beat any Anioma man to earn two doctorates in the mathematical sciences (Dr. Iyahen) and is the first Nigerian to earn a D.Sc (as a higher doctorate than a Ph.D) in any of the mathematical sciences.


17. Regarding Dr. Athony Osagie: "Outstanding"? I didn't go that far. Unfortunately, there are really only a limited number scholars out of Nigeria that can truly be called outstanding in their field. In his specific area of his field, he is important, but about his standing in biochemistry in general, I did not make any particular claim as I am not knowledgeable enough about biochemistry to make any particular claim. What I said was that it is a fact that he has many more publications and citations than Professor Nwanze, but I am not claiming that appointments are made based on that fact alone. I know that there are other factors involved, such as seniority, contributions to the university, etc. My point is that on an academic basis they are not on the same tier and that is why Professor Osagie is a former head of the biochemistry department and a past president of Nigeria's biochemistry society, while Dr. Nwanze, who is also a biochemist, is a past president of no such organization. Consequently one cannot claim that Osagie was academically deficient or inferior for the position, just as one cannot claim that he did not have seniority (which he did and he was even a founding faculty member of Uniben).

For the source of publications and citations statement that I made there are multiple websites one can use:


a) ISI Web of Knowledge (Thomson Reuters) <---- not easily accessible, need a subscription to properly use it

b) Google scholar <---- easily useable, a simple search for "A Osagie" and "E Nwanze" should satisfy your curiosity

c) Scopus <---- need to register

18. Regarding the first primary school, I can only laugh. Once again the "lie" you exposed was due to a simple error of omission. You got lucky there. I was actually the one who posted a book link in an earlier post which even said how slaves in the Delta Igbo area in the late 1800s (before 1900) were the most enthusiastic about embracing Western education to save them from the abuses and sacrifices that they had been subjected to by their chiefs and owners. So I was not unaware of missionary schools as I had read that even before this came up, but this question of why they had schools (missionary schools) a quarter of a century earlier, but didn't beat the Binis so hands down educationally is very interesting. Those UN reports on Nigeria that you love so much consistently put Edo state ahead of Delta state with regard to "educational index" (I'm not saying that this statistic is in any way reliable, but you seem to think these reports are truly accurate).


19. Where did I say the Ibusa teachers training college was not a secondary school? I know how "college" is used in Nigeria and what it refers to. Don't misquote me.

Regarding Dr. Frank Ndili being the first nuclear physicist (1965) from black Africa, I would be a little more cautious with that claim. It was rightfully believed by Nigerians that Chike Obi was the first sub saharan African to get a Ph.D. in mathematics because there was no evidence of anyone earlier, but then some Ghanians produced a claim that a Ghanian, A. M. Taylor, got a Ph.D in mathematics from Oxford in 1947. While I have not seen any concrete evidence to buttress that claim, I certainly do not think that the Ghanians would lie and make up a person and a date for such a claim. Also, Nigerians could easily claim that the first black African Ph.D in chemistry (or, if not all of chemistry, then just physical chemistry), was Dr. Emovon, but they have not done so out of cautiousness. I am sure that Alexander Animalu (Igbo, but not Anioma) is the first sub saharan African Ph.D in solid state physics, and Abel Guobadia (Bini) was the second in solid state physics, but I think Nigerians have not yet claimed to have produced the first overall physics Ph.D in all of black Africa out of cautiousness. In the same way, a Yoruba man was the first Nigerian Ph.D in computer science (1971) but I doubt that anyone knows for sure that Nigeria actually produced the first black African Ph.D in computer science or that anyone has claimed that a Yoruba produced the first African Ph.D in computer science. My point is that modesty and cautiousness would serve your case better.

13. If you want to compare Dr. Frank Ndili's area of his Ph.D (Nuclear Physics) with Dr. Emovon's area (Physical Chemistry) then I should retort that Professor Sunday Iyahen, a topologist, was one of the first Nigerians to get a mathematics Ph.D. for research in a really abstract area of mathematics. Of course, all pure math is abstract, but there are differences: differential equations would not be very high on the ladder of abstraction, for example (I am not talking about "difficulty", just for the record).
Also, Dr. Iyahen was one of the earliest Nigerians in any of the (pure, not applied) mathematical sciences to introduce any new concept in a scientific area (with his results on certain types of topological spaces: countably ultrabarrelled and countably quasiultrabarrelled spaces, ultrabornological spaces, etc.) and that is probably why he was at one point acting director of the Nigerian Mathematical Centre in Abuja when it first started, when many other ethnic groups in the nation could have been there before a Bini.

I should also point out that of the (only) three Nigerian academics who have the D.Sc degree (as claimed by this poster in this thread: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-264280.0.html), not as their first doctorate, but as a higher degree than a Ph.D, Dr. Iyahen is one of the these few Nigerians to have a D.Sc (1987) after already completing a Ph.D (1967). With the educational head start of the Anioma, I would have expected an Anioma man to earn that degree first, but Jerome Nriagu (who got his honorary D.Sc in the same year (1987) as Dr. Iyahen) is from Anambra and the other Professor (Okezie Aruoma) could be Anioma or he could be from elsewhere (I'm not really certain), but he got his DSc after Dr. Iyahen regardless of where he's from.

I also would not expect that a Bini, and with a degree in such an abstract area (topology), would be among that small group of Nigerians with a D.Sc as a higher doctorate degree if I believed even for a second that Binis were academically deficient.


14. Being Igbo, accomplished and being appointed VC of UNN is a greater achievement than being from a group (Bini) which was and is only 1/50th of Nigeria's population (if you actually believe that Nigeria's population is now nearly 150 million and you assume the Binis are nearly 3 million) and is vastly outnumbered by other groups - several of which have equally high drive for educational attainment - and then managing to become VC of a university in the Middle Belt as early as 1978? I doubt that. If anything, it's almost certainly the other way around.

15. Regarding Dr, Chike Onwuachi, that's good, but it's a bit tangential to my specific grouse against your mention of university VCs. I could bring up the fact that the first president of the Nigerian Society of Engineers was G.O. Aiwerioba (another Bini), but it would be completely tangential to my point. If I wanted to go off on a tangent, I could talk about people like Osagie Imasogie, Dr. Osato Giwa Osagie, Osaze Osifo and many others, but I am not here to produce a list of Bini achievers as I would necessarily be handicapped in producing such a list by the fact that I am a) much younger and b) somewhat out of the loop and c) not really interested in engaging Binis in the useless bragging competitions that Igbos and Yorubas on this website (nairaland) frequently engage in. So I am not going to segue into any real name dropping competition.

I only brought up Dr. Emovon because any claim of academic deficiency against Binis would have to be measured against the reality of the fact that he got a Ph.D at such an early time, and in a fundamental subject (chemistry) before anybody else from any other group.

9. Of course Mr. Moloku was not an Edo man. There would not be an issue with Mr. Moloku being an Igbo man and there were many non-Binis who passed through that school (such as the first VC of Uniben, who was not Bini) and many non-Binis who were employed there.

In the scholarship scheme recently established by Edo College, some of the scholarships are named after and funded by Igbos. In that Anglican church (Revd. Payne Memorial) in Benin City that was closed down and which was not founded by Igbos, the two primary languages were Edo and Igbo. I bet that if the first VC of Uniben had been Igbo/Anioma, there would also have been no complaints throughout the whole of the Midwest/Bendel. The only reason there was some complaint from the Binis over the VC thing is because there seemed to be some deliberate game of exclusion against Binis for no reason.

10. So there was not an Anioma VC before Emovon? What were you guys doing with that educational head start? I can only laugh. All that educational advantage and

11. The first VC of UniJos was also Igbo, but he was not Anioma. But my point about Professor Emovon is that not only was he the first Nigerian Ph.D in chemistry (Physical Chemistry, 1959), despite coming from a small ethnic group, he was also a vice chancellor before any Anioma man or anybody from several other groups, some of them with larger populations, yet Binis were not claiming some sort of superiority or putting down any other groups.

12. So you need to use sub-fields of a discipline to state what the Anioma were first in? (because I know for a fact that Dr. Frank Ndili was not the first physics Ph.D. out of Nigeria). This despite your very real educational head start in Aniomaland? If I should follow your logic, then Professor Godwin Ekhaguere (one of the earliest (if not the first) Nigerian Ph.Ds in Mathematical Physics (as a specific sub-field of physics)) is more impressive than some other earlier Ph.Ds because of the specific area of his Ph.D.

I could even buttress such a weak argument by the fact that mathematical physics is one of the "rarer" areas of specialization in physics in the sense that many more physicists are condensed matter/solid state physicists, AMO, nuclear, or in other areas of physics and this has been the case for a while. Regardless, this argument doesn't hold. Kudos to Dr. Ndili, but I don't see it as more impressive just because of the area the Ph.D is in.