The Anambra State Government has expressed delight at the award of the Nigerian National Order of Merit, the country’s highest honour for intellectual and artistic achievement, vested on Charles Ejike Chidume.
Chidume was honoured at the State House, Abuja on February 8, 2022.
An internationally recognised mathematics professor, Chidume beat over 1,200 contestants to clinch the honour last week.
Other honourees include medical scientist, Oluyinka Olutoye, and 2021 awardee for science, Prof. Godwin O. Ekhaguere.
A statement on behalf of the state government and signed by the Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Don Adinuba, on Monday, expressed the delight of the state Governor, Willie Obiano, in a letter to President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), earlier on Sunday.
The statement reads, “By being among the three most recent NNOM laureates, Chidume has helped to elongate the list of winners of Nigeria’s most prestigious award for academic excellence from Anambra State.”
According to the commissioner, all the NNOM recipients from Anambra State will be among the indigenes of the state to be honoured at the ceremony marking the state’s 30th anniversary which would have been held last August 27 but for the November 6 gubernatorial election in the state, was shifted.
He said, “We will continue to honour men and women of outstanding learning because education explains the difference between a developed society and an undeveloped one.
“It is as a result of the premium paid to education by the Governor Obiano administration that Anambra has posted far better results than any state in Nigeria in the last seven years, almost habitually winning the first position in every external examination involving schoolchildren.”
He, therefore, expressed optimism that with Chukwuma Charles Soludo, a globally respected economics professor, assuming office as governor on March 17, the state will become far more competitive in education and other sectors.
Chidume, an indigene of Nimo in Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra State, waa trained at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Queen’s University in Canada as well as the Ohio State University in the United States.
He died at the age of 74 last year while serving as the acting President of the African University of Science and Technology, Abuja, after a successful long period at the UNN as an outstanding scholar.
The statement added that though the NNOM honour is like the Nobel Prize, awarded annually only to living individuals and organisations, Chidume received it from Buhari last week, because when he was selected as a laureate in 2020, he was still alive.
It added that the awards could not be held last year on account of the lockdown arising from the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
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