Smartest people, mediocre nation.
1. BRITISH Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin once noted that the University of Lagos was one of the world centres of expertise in her specialist field of chemical crystallography.
2. Ahmadu Bello University Zaria had the first world class computer centre in Africa. The University of Ife had a notable pool of expertise in nuclear physics.
3. Our premier University of Ibadan had an international reputation as a leading centre of excellence in tropical medicine, development economics and the historical sciences. The Saudi Royal family used to frequent UCH for medical treatment in the sixties.
4. The engineering scientist Ayodele Awojobi, a graduate of ABU Zaria, was a rather troubled genius. He tragically died of frustration because our environment could not contain let alone utilise, his talents. Ishaya Shuaibu Audu, pioneer Nigerian Vice-Chancellor of ABU Zaria, collected all the prizes at St. Mary’s University Medical School London. His successor in Zaria, Iya Abubakar, was a highly talented Cambridge mathematician who became a professor at 28 and was a noted consultant to NASA.
5. Alexander Animalu was a gifted MIT physicist who did work of original importance in superconductivity. His book, Intermediate Quantum Theory of Crystalline Solids, has been translated into several languages, including Russian.
6. Renowned mathematician Chike Obi solved Fermat’s 200-year old conjecture with pencil and paper while the Cambridge mathematician John Wiles achieved same with the help of a computer working over a decade.

1980s

After the harsh environment of the 1980s IMF/WB structural adjustment programmes, the Babangida military dictatorship undertook massive budgetary cutbacks in higher education. Our brightest and best fled abroad. Today, Nigerian doctors, scientists and engineers are making massive contributions in Europe and North America.

A. Philip Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Award for his work in super-computing. Jelani Aliyu designed the first electric car for American automobile giant General Motors.

B. Olufunmilayo Olopede, Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, won a McArthur Genius Award for her work on cancer.

C. Winston Soboyejo, who earned a Cambridge doctorate at 23, is a Princeton engineering professor laurelled for his contributions to materials research. He is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

D. Washington University biomedical engineering professor Samuel Achilefu received the St. Louis Award for his invention of cancer-seeing glasses that is a major advance in radiology.

E. Kunle Olukotun of Stanford did work of original importance on multi-processors. National Merit laureate Omowunmi Sadik of State University of Binghamton owns patents for biosensors technology.

Young Nigerians are also recording stellar performances at home and abroad.

F. A Nigerian family, the Imafidons, were voted “the smartest family in Britain” in 2015. Anne-Marie Imafidon earned her Oxford Masters’ in Mathematics and Computer Science when she was only 19. Today, she sits on several corporate boards and was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to science.

G. Recently, Benue State University mathematician Atovigba Michael Vershima is believed to have solved the two centuries old Riemann Conjecture that has defied giants such as Gauss, Minkowski and Polya.

In Brazil, a Nobel laureate is entitled by statute to the same pension rights as a former President. Society must adequately recognise and reward all men and women of excellence. Our government should keep a roster of all super-achievers of Nigerian origin and we should tap their brains for the building of our country.
"Nigeria can break records in human development if the environment is correct "

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/07/smartes