₦airaland Forum

ChinenyeN: I wonder though, if it is actually possible to undo this ezeship business. How exactly could one go about it?

Nigerian breaks academic record at John Hopkins University
June 26, 2012 by SEGUN OLUGBILE 356 Comments

A 22-year-old Nigerian has emerged one of the top graduating students of John Hopkins University in the United States. He obtained a Grade Point Average of 3.98 out of a possible 4.0 to earn a degree in Neurosciences, SEGUN  OLUGBILE writes.
A 22-year-old Nigerian, Emmanuel Ohuabunwa, has made history at John Hopkins University, United States of America.  Ohuabunwa from Arochukwu, Abia State, has done the nation proud by becoming the first black man to make a Grade Point Average of 3.98 out of 4.0 to bag a degree in Neurosciences in the university. He was also adjudged as having the highest honours during the graduation that was held on May 24 this year.
For his efforts, he has won a scholarship to Yale University to pursue a degree in medicine. Besides, he has been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa Society, a prestigious honour group that features membership of 17 US Presidents, 37 US Supreme Court Justices, and 136 Nobel Prize winners.
According to Wikipedia, The Phi Beta Kappa Society is an academic honour society. Its mission is to “celebrate and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences” and induct “the most outstanding students of arts and sciences at America’s leading colleges and universities.”
 It was founded at The College of William and Mary on December 5, 1776, and thus it is the oldest honour society for the liberal arts and sciences and among the oldest undergraduate societies in the US.
In an online interview with our correspondent, Ohuabunwa, who was born in Okota, Lagos and attended Lilly Fields Primary School, Lagos, said he left Nigeria after his junior secondary school education at Air Force Comprehensive School, Ibadan, Oyo State. 
“My parents moved the whole family when I was 13 years old. I was about to begin SS1 at Air Force, Ibadan. When I got to the US, I was enrolled with my age mates, which meant at 13, I was in middle school. I went to Fondren Middle School, which was in the middle of the ghetto. That was one of the darkest years for me because I encountered a lot of peer pressure. Some of the students, ignorant about Africa, bullied me and called me names such as ‘African booty scratcher’ because to them, Africans were dirty and scratched their butts all the time.
“Some asked me if I lived in mud huts and ate faeces for breakfast. I remember one day, when I was walking to the school bus, a boy came from behind and punched me in the face, called me an African and walked away. It took everything in me not to retaliate. I knew that God had put me in the U.S for a purpose and it did not involve fighting or selling drugs or doing the wrong things.
“My experience during that year gave me a thick skin. I learned to stand for what I thought was right even when the opposition seemed insurmountable. I also learned to look at the positive in all situations. Even though these kids were bullying me, I was still gaining an opportunity to school in America and nothing would stop me from making the best of this opportunity.
“The shocker was that the kid that punched me in the face was black. I would have expected the blacks to be nicer to me. Nevertheless, I don’t blame those kids because they were ignorant about Africa. All they knew about us was the stuff they had watched on TV or documentaries, showing primitive African tribes, living in the jungle and making noises like monkeys.
 “In regards to the whites, there might have been some minor episodes but again I don’t blame them for it because it is a problem with stereotypes,” he said.
But in spite of this humiliation and racial prejudice against him, the first in a family of three was not discouraged. He faced his studies and was always coming top in his class. After he completed his middle school education, he passed the entrance examination to DeBakey High School for Health Professions. It was at this school that his interest in neurosciences and medicine started.
“By the second year of high school, we were able to interact with doctors, nurses and other administrators in the hospital. The more I learned about medicine, the more it felt like the thing God was calling me to pursue and by being in the US I got a lot of people to support me to do this. Even though in high school, I got to see first-hand what it meant to be a doctor. We studied advanced anatomy and physiology, learned medical terminology, and learned important skills, such as checking blood pressure, pulse rate, and many more.
“I knew I wanted to go to the best school in the US. I had heard that Johns Hopkins Hospital had been ranked the number one hospital in the US for the past 21 years and I wanted to be in that environment.’’
Worried that his parents might not be able to sponsor him to the university, Ohuabunwa purposed to work very hard. He did and when the result of the PSAT came, he performed so well that he won the National Achievement Scholar.
By virtue of this award, he received certificates of recognition from various organisations including senators from the Congress of both Texas and the US. He also received scholarship from the University of Houston; Rice University, Texas A&M Honors College and many more.
He had also won the Principal’s Award during the annual awards ceremony at DeBakey High School.
“During our graduation ceremony at DeBakey, I also won the Award for the Most Outstanding Senior Young Man and the student volunteer award for my volunteer activities in the State of Texas,” he said.
 But his breakthrough came when he won the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation full scholarship to any university of his choice. He worked hard and gained admission to Johns Hopkins University to study Neurosciences.
But why Neurosciences, Ohuabunwa said, “I studied Neuroscience, because I was fascinated with the brain, its control of our behaviours and how various diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, lead to a decline in its activity. I also minored in Psychology because I wanted to understand disorders in the psyche. What causes bipolar disorders or schizophrenia. I did not just want to label them as crazy but to understand what causes these conditions and how we can treat them,’’ he explained.
 But what does he consider to be the missing links in the education sector of Nigeria when compared with that on offer in US, Ohuabunwa said unpredictable academic calendar, corruption, examination malpractice and inadequate funding were some of the problems confronting his home country’s university sector. These, he said, were absent in the US.
 “There were a few problems with Nigerian higher education that contributed to our emigration in 2003.  The first was the number of strikes that occurred in schools. It took my uncle seven years to graduate with a degree that should have taken him only four years. A second problem was the corruption. We had heard of people going into universities, because they paid someone to look the other way. I also heard of a few cheating scandals, where people would pay someone to take their exams for them or get a copy of the exam a few days before,” he said.
But is he saying that US university system has no such problems at all? Ohuabunwa said, “Although this sometimes occurs in the U.S, it is less common because of the strict security. I remember when taking the Medical College Admissions Test,  test required before one can matriculate into medical school, each student had to get his fingerprints taken every time we entered and left the hall. The whole place was packed with cameras and security staff that monitored everything we were doing. The exam was computerised to make sure that no one saw the test before the actual date.”
Another difference, he said, is that America rewards hard-work while the system also emphasises on a balance between academic life and extracurricular activities.
On how he won the scholarship to Yale, Ohuabunwa said his 3.98 GPA in Neurosciences, and many awards he had won and God’s grace, contributed to his winning the scholarship.
“As at the time of my application for medical school, I had a 3.98 GPA of a 4.0. This made me  the only black student inducted into the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa. I was also awarded the Becker Family Scholarship for being the most outstanding student in the Neuroscience major at Johns Hopkins University. Furthermore, by God’s grace, I took the MCAT and scored in the top five percentile.
“That, combined with my hours of volunteer service in different hospitals across the US allowed me to gain acceptance into every medical school I applied to, including Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and Cornell. As the time came to make a decision, I had narrowed it down to Harvard and Yale. Both schools, I enjoyed visiting. Nevertheless, while my parents prayed, they asked God to give us a sign of what school to attend. A few days later, I received a letter from Yale Medical School, offering me a full ride scholarship for all four years. That was the sign from God,” he said.
But would he come back to Nigeria after the completion of his programme, he said yes.
“I am absolutely interested in the health care policy decisions in Nigeria. Because there are many changes that need to occur, I will not rule out the possibility of coming back after my studies, in order to join hands with the leaders to make these changes possible.’’
He added that his ambition is to become a medical doctor specialising in brain surgery.
 “Two weeks ago, my grandmother passed away after a long battle with strokes. Even during emergencies, it was difficult for her to get to the hospital, let alone get treatment. This is a common theme not only in the health care system of Nigeria, but in different countries in the world, where the poor get neglected.
“Second, Nigerian hospitals lack the infrastructure required to compete with major hospitals around the world. It would be an honour to one day contribute to this transformation that is necessary for improvements in Nigeria’s health care sector,” he said.
He, however, advised Nigerian youths who have the wherewithal, to go abroad to study. Ohuabunwa also called on  wealthy Nigerians to invest more in the education of the poor rather than in acquisition of material things.
Ohuabunwa, however, said that his parents, who he described as his greatest role models,  contributed a lot  to his academic feat through Godly training, counsel and guidance. He also did not forget the impact  that his short stay at Air Force school had on him.
 “I was definitely not the brightest at Air Force. At that time, I felt like I spent more time running away from seniors than focusing on my studies. Nevertheless, I learned three things at Air Force that have served me well in the US. I learned discipline, adaptability and resilience. These attributes helped me a lot in US,” he said.

Obiagu1: Your assertion is faulty to an extent. You can't use the growth of the Igbo people in the last 100 years to make a definite statement like "too negligible to form an independent social group". Population of a country, if birth control is not in place, tend to explode as they get larger tending from arithmetic progression to geometric progression. For instance, India could double its population in just 20 years while Nigeria could record only a 30% growth in the same 20 years span.

Greeks are a known ethnic group and have been around for so long yet Greece population is a mere 11 million.

If southern ethnic groups were one ethnic group before, then the time they split would be close to the time humans started evolving on earth.

ChinenyeN: I don't believe you can rightly use the population growth of the past century to make any assertions about the past two thousand years, since the growth of this past century is owed to the acute onset of industrialization. Before industrialization, things remained relatively the same for centuries. So I wouldn't be surprised if the population also remained relatively steady for centuries, rather than declining to a number that would have been too negligible.

ChinenyeN: Odumchi, I recognize that you understood, and that you were also helping them to understand. I appreciate that, and I appreciate your efforts to arbitrate this, though I feel that your efforts would actually not have be necessary had One Naira and Andre simply read my statement, as I wrote it, instead of them being so quick to take unnecessary offense.

ChinenyeN: People should learn to read and understand a statement, as it is written.

My full statement was thus: "You're Delta state. You're technically not Igbo, in context of this discussion".

In all of people's rush to take offense, they conveniently chose to only read "You're technically not Igbo" and conveniently ignore "in context of this discussion". As far as the truth stands, the point I made was a legitimate and simple one, and my statement was clear and non-ambiguous. I cannot be held liable for any reader's careless misinterpretation. Nothing in my initial statement is offensive or designed to be offensive, unless you (the reader, whomever you are) so choose to read it as such.

pleep: I didn't say japan was militarily better than anyone. I simply mentioned them because their reasons for adopting firearms was similar to europes reasons. Their military was dominated by heavily armored knights (samurai) the only way to counter their power was to adopt firearms.

ChinenyeN: You're Delta state. You're technically [b]not [/b]Igbo, in context of this discussion.

cowgurl: Hmm, I see. Thanks for the tip Odumchi, but me spending more time in my village is scary as hell as we don't really go down there cept for the festivities and after that, the village is not going to be fun to hang around in, I'l js get dead bored to my bones.

Ileke-IdI:
His intention with the picture was to ridicule the Yorubas. A clothing of Ghanaian Kente during a masquerade is being represented as a Yoruba political attire. He was corrected by a few Yorubas, but tribalism (which he has showed several times before he became a MOD) blind-sighted him. Whilst he post what one assumes as "respectable" attire for HIS culture, he knew what he did with the Yorubas.

As much as I'd like to quote his other incidents, I do not have the energy to to through his posts. While he's under suspension, the suer Mods can analyze him.

cowgurl: Am not a resident in any DaRapture. Why ask? Any correlation?

EnuguMan: Sorry, I mean, please translate the Igbo to English. thanks

EnuguMan: Can someone please translate this for me? "I just dey ooo! Mi just dey suji for ur yan now!! So, wey u dey now?" Also, "So, wetin you dey para naa?"

Andre Uweh: Just the same.
Those who do not use diviners use christianity as an excuse. They will choose to use the bible to prove their innocence, yet we all know that the bible does not strike guilty people down. But with the diviners or at some shrines like Kamalu, Ala ogbaga etc, it does not spare the wicked.

Andre Uweh: @Wesley80, it is interesting to note that you say Alishi instead or Arushi. In some other places in Igboland, it is called Alusi or alushi.
I think it will be nice for some of you guys paritcipate in those threads about various Igbo dialects or various Igbo greetings. It really helps one another.

wesley80: Dont know much abt other Ndokwa towns but history books are replete with accounts of Aboh paticipation in the slave trade both with the Brits and locally, relics of the ancient trade still litter one of the ancient standing Palaces till today. Slavery was pretty widespread in the ancient Kingdom and one of Prof Isichei's account tells the tale of about 40slaves being buried alongside the very powerful Obi Ossai. As a matter of fact, some in present day Aboh can still point to families who settled in the community after they failed to retrace their original roots, Come to think of it, the Aboh people must have known quite a lot abt Slave trade for their king to have abducted the Lander Brothers and "sold" them off to the Atta of Igala!

About the worship of Arusi, u're right but in these parts its called alishi (or more appropriately alrishi) and is the chief god in Aboh and a few communities around. Unlike a few other local gods, its origin seems to be quite deeper as it is the undisputed god of d land though the influence of certain foreign traditions is obvious on it. There is the alrishi-mmili which seems to be a potpourri of ijaw and indigenous traditions judging by how its celebrated and "danced"- best I stop here lest I veer too far.
About worshipping the devil, I guess any trad without roots in either of the Abrahamic religions are doing so arent they?

Dudu_Negro: Well, it is the main opposition power and that is significant for injecting strategies into the polity. Strategies that shape policies at the center and bring the ruling party into compromises. You know the history of PDP in the West. . . we have shaved off their influences.

For good or bad, Yoruba has its own destiny in its hand. Our land, our people, our vision, our politics. . . united under one umbrella. We may not rule the policies in the center but we rule the temperaments that guide consequences for the center.

ACN can help you. We see what you or no one else see.