Premised on the Punch newspaper's disclosure, Professor Moses Ebe Ochonu launched an all out attack on University of Ilorin, for allowing itself to be deceived by a dubious Professor in the person of Chris Imafidon. Professor Ochonu's article was posted on this forum by Professor Toyin Falola on Saturday, 16 December 2017 and titled : On Chris Imafidon, Oxford and the government Graft. Referring to the Punch investigative article, Professor Ochonu wrote that it turned out that 'Chris Imafidon is our latest high profile international academic scam artist in the tradition of Philip Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo.' On the same day that the aforementioned article was posted, a Professor of Queen's English, Farooq Kperogi, took a free ride on Professor Ochonu's article by posting on this forum what he titled : Remember Enoch Opeyemi Who Claimed to Have Solved Riemann Hypothesis. To Moses and Farooq, Professor Toyin Falola posed a question : If you are not based in Oxford, and you deceive yourself and others to the level of giving a Convocation Lecture, is this not a madness? Professor Falola's question spurred me into thinking that a Professor delivering a convocation lecture must sound like a Professor to his audience, otherwise he or she will risk being exposed to ridicule. A false claim to being a Professor in ordinary public space may be simple but to act or behave as a Professor within a University environment is very difficult. From what we have read so far, neither Professor Ochonu nor the Punch newspaper produced any evidence to show that Chris Imafidon's Convocation Lecture did not measure up to the standard of a Professor. And the way Professor Falola framed his question to Professors Ochonu and Kperogi seemed to indicate that he was not in doubt if Chris Imafidon is a real Professor but doubted if he is based in Oxford. If Chris Imafidon is a Professor somewhere else but not in Oxford as the question raised by Professor Falola would imply, Chris Imafidon would be guilty of fame padding because his claim to be an Oxford Professor which he is not increased his fame more than what it would have been if he had given the correct name of the less famous University in which he is based. Fame padding which is the same as academic padding is not harmful as it was illustrated by the case of a Director at Bazita Sugar Refinery in Kwara State, in 1984.
In 1984, under the military rule of General Muhammadu Buhari, there was a public commission of enquiry pertaining to financial miss-appropriation at the then Bazita Sugar Refinery then in Kwara State. The Director of the Company was accused of claiming to be a PhD holder in Bio-Chemistry by a witness at the enquiry, whereas he possessed just BSc in Bio-Chemistry. The witness informed the Commission that the Director had registered for a PhD course in Bio-Chemistry at the University of Manchester in UK which he did not follow up. Counsel to the Director asked the witness, 'What is the least qualification required to be the Director of the Sugar Refinery?' Witness did not know. Counsel reframed the question, 'Is PhD in Bio-Chemistry required and necessary to be the Director of Bazita Sugar Refinery?' Witness answered no. Counsel asked the witness to tell the commission the significance of the epithets, Alhaji, Bishop, Pastor, Chief, General, Marshall, Doctor and Professor when used singly or collectively by any person as practised in Nigeria. Since the witness kept mute, the counsel asked rhetorically and demanded answer in yes or no, 'Are they not just ordinary titles?' The witness answered, yes. Buhari was overthrown and the report of the enquiry was never made public to the best of my knowledge. The Director of Bazita Sugar Refinery certainly padded his academic qualification but it had no adverse effect on the functions and productions of the Company at that time. Considering the use of epithets in Nigeria, one can see that Nigerians are title-sick which is why they buy, sell, forge, and even rent titles. Most Nigerians do not want to be ordinary persons. They must be great somebody, be important and very important person whether they add important value to the country or not.
I want to argue that we Nigerians may be the most intellectually gullible people on earth. That may be an exaggeration, but we tend to be drawn to bombastic, self-promoting persons and are thus easy prey for fraudulent claimants to academic genius. We also hunger for heroes, making t possible for dubious persons to fulfil that longing for us. ....//.... If according to the scammers, the white man says they are praise-worthy, who are we to object or scrutinize their claim? That is our approach to these men. We cannot conceive of a world in which people and objects purportedly authenticated by the white man should be questioned or verified - Professor Moses Ebe Ochonu.
I strongly object to referring to Chris Imafidon, Philip Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo as scammers. To begin with, the University of Ilorin had given a pass mark to the Convocation Lecture delivered by Chris Imafidon. If Professor Ochonu had been present at the Convocation Lecture, he too would have doubtlessly clapped his hands to applaud Chris Imafidon for his Lecture just as those who were present there did. What was really important to the audience was if Imafidon's Lecture was proficiently Professorial or not. As long as the University of Ilorin and the audience were satisfied that Imafidon sounded like a Professor in his Convocation Lecture it will be wrong to refer to him as a scammer not even if he is not a real Professor in Anglo-American sense. In France and Latin countries a teacher is called a Professor!! And for Imafidon to have succeeded in delivering a Convocation Lecture as a Professor without being one, confirmed the saying that the hood does not make a monk.
Talking about white man's authenticated scammers for Nigerians, should it not be right to conclude that all Nigerians in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) whose academic papers have been authenticated by the white man are scammers since all the MDAs in Nigeria are dysfunctional? Why should any Nigerian castigate the white man as authenticator of scammers in respect of Imafidon, Emeagwali and Oyibo but not when the same white man is the authenticator of Ochonu and Kperogi as Professors? Evidently, neither Imafidon nor Emeagwali or Oyibo holds position in any MDA in Nigeria. Are we not leaving substances and chasing shadows by questioning their academic worth when we should be questioning the genuineness of the academic qualifications of those elected/selected/appointed/employed in the MDAs of Nigeria producing backward economic and industrial developments for the country?
Michael O. Afolayan joined the debate on Thursday, 21 December 2017, and part of his post read, "I also agree with Moses, the self-hate that characterizes our unquenchable appetite for anything foreign has become the tether that ties us to the post of inferiority, imbuing other people's junks and rejecting our own valuables. ....//.... Had Chris Imafidon made the mistake of claiming to be a graduate of a Nigerian University, he would have become a laughing stock from Day One of his jolly ride."
In the Nigerian context, unquenchable appetite for anything foreign implies everything from the white man. Dr. Afolayan, like all educated Nigerians, is sitting on a stem of a tree planted by the White man. If he thinks the tree does not serve the interest of Nigeria, he cannot sit tight on the stem of the White man's tree and at the same time pretend cutting it down. The wisest thing to do is to climb down from the neo-colonial White man's tree and uproot it since it does not serve the interest of Nigerians. He cannot pretend to having no appetite for the White man's neo-colonial tree while at the same time sitting comfortably on its stem. The language of governance in Nigeria, English, is white man's and foreign. Over 98% of Nigerians cannot read, write or speak English properly. Our Universities are modelled after English and American systems which are foreign. If the Convocation Lecture at the University of Ilorin had been delivered by a Nigerian-based Professor instead of the supposedly Oxford-based Professor, it would not have turned the delivered Lecture into indigenous one, as Dr. Michael Afolayan seemed to suggest. This is because the institution is foreign and the language of expression at the Lecture, English, is white. The truth which Western educated Nigerians never want to admit is that the political, educational, economic and judicial systems in Nigeria are subordinate to the U.S. and European Union. Despite that a national flag and a national anthem was conceded to Nigeria in 1960, we are still controlled by the white world. How is that possible?
When Nigeria was granted self-administered enslavement, the rank of leaders of our government was that of slave overseers. Of course, when white men departed Nigeria, Western educated Nigerians took over their jobs, inherited their rates of pay and their privileges, played their roles and assumed their attitudes towards ordinary Nigerians. Chinua Achebe narrated what happened when British left government ministries, public and privately held firms, corporations, organizations, and schools in Nigeria after October 1, 1960. He wrote, "... a number of internal jobs, especially the senior management positions, began to open up for Nigerians, particularly for those with a university education. It was into these positions vacated by the British that a number of people like myself were placed. ...//... This bequest was much greater than just stepping into jobs left behind by the British. Members of my generation also moved into homes in the former British quarters previously occupied by members of the European senior civil servant. These homes often came with servants - chauffeurs, maids, cooks, gardeners, stewards - whom the British had organized meticulously to ease their colonial sojourn. Now following the departure of the Europeans, many domestic staff stayed in the same positions and were only too grateful to continue their designated salaried roles in post-independence Nigeria. Their masters were no longer European but their brothers and sisters." (p. 48-9, There Was a Country).
What Chinua Achebe failed to note is that Nigerians who stepped into the jobbs left by the British in Nigeria were serving the interest of the British people in the same manner as the departed British officials. The Yoruba people who observed the life-styles of the new Nigerian officials that replaced the British, euphemistically referred to them as, ÒYÌNBÓ ALÁWÒ DÚDÚ meaning WHITE MAN WITH BLACK SKIN. Right from the beginning, acquisition of Western education was introduced to Nigerians as means of enjoying white man's standard of living without labour because the concept of work, as we were indoctrinated, is associated with suffering, punishment and unsuccessful life. Initially, the MDAs could absorb all educated Nigerians into the bureaucracy which soon became congested as more Nigerians acquired white man's education in order to escape working for their livings. Consequently, ethnicity and religion became tools of competition to gain admission into the club of White man with black skin. The throat-cutting competitions for position in offices led to the insertion of 'Federal Character' into the Constitution of Nigeria which guaranteed appointment or employment to individuals regardless of competence and ability to perform in office. Thus, when the white world typecast the Blacks in general as unintelligent and inferior to the whites, it is not because of the colour of the skin alone, as Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray had indicated in their book, THE BELL CURVE, but because the Black man has refused to be the master of his environment and manager of his endowed natural resources of which Nigerians are typical example. The tether that ties us to the post of inferiority is, therefore, not our appetite for anything foreign, as Dr. Michael Afolayan stated, but our ignorant belief that Western Europeans that carted us to America and West Indies as slaves and later partitioned Africa into their colonies at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, had set us free and the colonisers are now treating us as their equals. The reason why we were colonised as it was historically recorded was never philanthropic.
Supporting Italy's invasion of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1935, Sir Arthur Willert wrote, "Italy must expand. She came late into the world as a Great Power and found that the good parts of the earth had already been apportioned between luckier countries. She cannot with her rapidly growing population, now in the neighbourhood of 45, 000, 000 (45 million) remain forever cooped up in her peninsula with its large tracts of barren mountains and its lack of essential raw materials (p. 206, The Frontiers of England by Sir Arthur Willert)." And where was Italy going to get raw materials and food to feed her rapidly growing population? Sir Arthur Willert answered that question on page 211 of his book thus, "Italy, in going for the Abyssinians (Ethiopians), is fighting on behalf of Europe. Europe is losing Asia; the Western Hemisphere is full up. So, of the great spaces of the world from which a short time ago her countries (European countries) could draw cheap supplies of food and raw material, only Africa remains. If Europe loses this last reservoir, it is done, it will shrink to nothing. Hence the Africans must be kept down."
Wailing over lack of food and raw material in the German Reichstag (Parliament), on 20 February 1938, Chancellor Adolf Hitler said among other things, "Our economic position is a difficult one, not because National-Socialism is at the helm, because 140 people must live on a square kilometre; because we are not in possession of those great, natural resources enjoyed by other people; because, above all we have a scarcity of fertile soil. If Great Britain should suddenly dissolve today and England become dependent solely on her own territory, then the people there would perhaps have more understanding of the seriousness of economic tasks which confront us (p.63, note 1, PEACE WITH THE DICTATORS By Sir Norman Angell)." Continuing on page 64, Adolf complained about the impossibility of feeding 140 people to a square kilometre without colonial rounding-off. Therefore, he concluded, "No matter what we may achieve by increasing the German production, all this cannot remove the impossible nature of the space allotted to Germany. The claim for German colonial possessions will, therefore, be voiced from year to year with increasing vigour, possessions which Germany did not take away from other countries ........ but appear indispensable for our own people." German colonial possessions which Hitler intended claiming with vigour so as to provide food and raw materials for the hungry Germans were South West Africa (now Namibia), Tanganyika (now Tanzania) Cameroon and Togo seized from Germany as a result of World War I. The total landmass area of those countries together is 2, 298,731square kilometres, compared to Germany with a landmass area of 357,041 square kilometres. Germany's natural resources barren and unfertile soil remain the same till date just as it is with Italy, France, Belgium, Britain, Spain, Portugal and other Western European countries. That was why Africa was colonised and the reason for colonialization of Africa remains the same although colonialization is self-administered nowadays by African indigenes as we have in Nigeria. The self-administered colonialism makes it possible for Nigeria to export crude oil to Italy, Germany and other countries in Europe where it is refined into various products for their citizens to consume, whereas Nigerians must sleep at fuel stations to buy petrol. The dysfunctional Nigeria's crude oil refineries are not manned by Imafidon, Opeyemi, Emeagwali or Oyibo but by qualified academic degree holders both from home and foreign Universities. If the academic degrees of managers of Nigeria's oil refineries are not fake, why are the crude oil refineries in permanent coma?
Professor Moses Ochonu's article titled, On Chris Imafidon, Oxford and Government Graft, did not receive so much comments as Professor Farooq Kperogi's, Remember Enoch Opeyemi who claimed to have solved the Riemann Hypothesis. In his reaction to the said article, Victor Okafor addressed two questions to Professor Kperogi, (1) Have you taken any step to find out from the Clay Mathematics Institute why and how it determined that Dr. Enoch Opeyemi's claim was false, inadequate or inaccurate? (2) What are the specific steps by which that institute arrived at its judgment, if any, that Dr, Opeyemi was merely fantasizing? These reasonable questions deserved answers in view of the claim by Professor Farooq Kperogi that after two years, he checked Clay Mathematics Institute, and the Riemann Hypothesis that Opeyemi claimed to have solved two years ago is still listed as unsolved. Surprisingly, Professor Farooq Kperogi completely ignored the intelligent questions raised by Victor Okafor. Instead, he resorted to childish display of unimportant knowledge with minute observance of petty rules and details of grammatical blunders committed by a commentator who, however, supported his views on Opeyemi. Sometimes, we write in haste and hurriedly post comments without reading to check for possible mistakes. Normal intellectuals, not braggadocios, always ignore such mistakes as long as they do not distort the sense in the conveyed message. Dr. Enoch Opeyemi, a mathematics lecturer at the Federal University of Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria, submitted papers to the US-based Clay Mathematics Institute claiming that he had solved the 156-year-old Riemann Hypothesis. After receiving Opeyemi's papers, Clay Mathematics Institute is obliged to publicly reject or accept his solution as contained in the submitted papers. Silence by the US-based Clay Mathematics Institute can only imply that Dr. Enoch Opeyemi actually solved the Riemann Hypothesis but the all white- dominated jury of the Institute are unwilling to accord recognition to the black man, Dr. Opeyemi, for solving the mathematical hypothesis in question. Dr. Opeyemi did not submit his papers to a PhD student for evaluation and decision but to Clay Mathematics Institute. The tragedy here, therefore, is not that a Ku Klux Klan PhD student is allowed to determine the veracity of Dr. Opeyemi's papers, as Professor Kperogi jubilantly stated, but his inability to see the racist and despiteful attitude of the authorities at the US-based Clay Mathematics Institute to Dr. Opeyemi who kept silent, over his professed solution to the Riemann Hypothesis, whether right or wrong. In the fields of Mathematics, Science and Technology, a white man will never accord a black man due honour for any new invention or discovery. The usual thing is for the white man to accept the black man's papers and make it his own. At best, the name of the black man may appear at the rear of the paper and introduced as a collaborator. Appropriation of others inventions or discoveries is not uncommon even between whites as the discovery of the AIDS virus in the 1980s proved. For the sake of the unsuspecting, let me recall that incident.
Dr. Robert Gallo of the US National Cancer Institute would have succeeded in appropriating to himself the discovery of the AIDS virus, if Dr. Luc Montagnier of the French Pasteur Institute, Paris, had been a black man or a Nigerian as Dr. Enoch Opeyemi. It was so that Dr. Luc Montagnier and colleagues at Pasteur Institute had succeeded in isolating a virus from the Lymph node of a homosexual patient in 1983 and had their result published in the Journal, Science of 20 May 1983. They named the isolated virus, Lymphadenopathy- Associated Virus (LAV). However, Dr. Robert Gallo claimed that LAV was a family member of his own virus named Human T-cell Leukaemia Virus-1 (HTLV-I). Montagnier disagreed and sent an isolate of LAV to Dr. Gallo on 23 September 1983, to help establish that LAV was not related to HTLV-I but a distinct virus. Pasteur Institute filed for a British and a US patent for blood test in September and December 1983, respectively. Suddenly, on 23 April 1984, Dr. Gallo appeared at a press conference in the company of the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler where the latter announced that American Scientists (Gallo and his Team) had discovered probable cause of AIDS. On the same day, the American government filed for AIDS testing kits patent. Gallo's AIDS virus discovery was published in the Science of 4 May 1984 with the photographs of the new virus, named Human T-cell Leukaemia Virus -Three (HTLV-III). It was subsequently discovered that Gallo's HTLV-III AIDS virus was identical to LAV isolate which Montagnier had sent to him on 23 September 1983. On 28 May 1985 the US Patent and Trademark Office awarded Gallo a patent on blood test kits but remained silent on Montagnier's application that preceded that of Gallo by nine months. Therefore, the Pasteur Institute filed a lawsuit at a US federal high court accusing National Cancer Institute of theft of the virus, LAV. In view of the political and commercial potentials of AIDS disease, President Ronald Regan of the US and President Jacques Chirac of France met in 1987 and agreed to out of court settlement, whereby Dr. Gallo was designated co-discoverer of the AIDS virus with Dr. Montagnier and royalties on blood test were to be shared equally between the warring AIDS combatants. A new name, Human Immunodeficiency Virus with the acronym, HIV, replaced LAV and HTLV-III. (see AIDS: THE HIV MYTH BY JAD ADAMS as well as AND THE BAND PLAYED ON BY RANDY SHILTS). Who actually discovered what today is known as HIV was finally settled in 2008 when the Nobel Price for the discovery was awarded to Dr. Luc Montagnier and his French colleague, Dr Francoise Barré-Sinoussi. The Nobel Price Committee explained that HIV was discovered in 1983 and not 1984!! If conflict could occur between a white French and a white American over who discovered HIV, I leave the rest to the imagination of readers to guess what could have happened when a black Nigerian, Dr. Enoch Opeyemi, submitted his papers on the solution of Riemann Hypothesis to the white American owned Clay Mathematics Institute.
Finally, I am not holding brief for Dr. Enoch Opeyemi or any of those accused of fake or fraudulent academic claims. Since Western education has not contributed to the growth of economy in Nigeria industrially through advances in medicine, science and technology, should it not be admitted that all Nigerian officials with academic qualifications that have failed the country are also fake or fraudulent academics? In the Nigeria Handbook of 1970, it was stated that mineral resources of the country consist of Limestone, Petroleum Oil and Gas, Tin and Colum-bite, Iron Ore, Lead-Zinc, Gold, Marble, Stone, Zircon, Coal and Lignite. Nigeria has 74 million hectares of arable land and 2.5 million hectares of irrigation land. The rainforest in the South contains different species of Timber. In May 1970, THE NIGERIAN COUNCIL FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY was inaugurated by the Military Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. Three of the objectives of the Nigerian Council for Science and Technology as stated on page one of its inaugural brochure were (a) to determine priorities for scientific activities in the Federation in relation to the economic and social policies of the country and its international commitments, (c) to ensure theapplication of the results of scientific activitiesto the development of agriculture, industry and social welfare in the Federation, (d) to ensure co-operation and co-ordination between the various agencies involved in the machinery for making the national science policy. Further on page 2, it is stated that the functions of the Council shall, among others, be (a) to consider and advise generally on all scientific activities, including (i)the application of the results of research, (ii) the transfer of technology into agriculture and industry. The thirty-five members of the Council consisted of eleven Federal Permanent Secretaries from Ministries of, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Communications, Economic Development and Reconstruction, Education, Finance, Health, Industries, Mines and Power, Trade, and Transport. Each of the then twelve states was represented by a person with, at least, an academic degree of B.Sc. while twelve representatives of science disciplines in Agricultural, Experimental, Industrial, Medical, Environmental and Social Sciences were also members. In his inaugural address to members, Major-General Yakubu Gowon said, "Nigeria is endowed with immense natural resources, which, if properly developed through the application of science and technology, would ensure for the present and future generations (of Nigeria) a bright economic future." Almost forty-eight years after the inauguration of the Nigerian Council For Science And Technology, Nigeria's herdsmen still traverse several hundred kilometres within the country to graze their cattle, a burden which some professors regard as herdsmen's fundamental human right worth defending. Our Agricultural system is still sustained by farmers primitively equipped with cutlasses and hoes. Crude oil we cannot refine; potable water we cannot pump; electricity we cannot generate and distribute; iron ore we cannot mine and work into steel; and our hospitals have been reduced to morgues while our leaders and officials run to the white man, from whom they claimed we have been liberated, to receive treatments. All Ministries, Departments and Agencies created to produce goods and services are manned by Nigerians whose academic degrees have certified them as capable of producing what are required from their respective office. Their failures in office can only mean that their academic degrees are fake and that is why Nigeria is poor and underdeveloped. While our Nigerian English Language Fundamentalists are blowing their grammars, the Dutch speaking Julius Berger is building Houses and Bridges and constructing roads for Nigeria, just as not so good English speaking Chinese are laying rail tracks for Nigeria. In fact there is need to write a book titled: HOW EDUCATED NIGERIANS ARE UNDERDEVELOPING NIGERIA AND IMPOVERISHING HER CITIZENS.
S. Kadiri
