Nigeria Content Online

The huge Nigerian,
and indeed African community in the United States engages in intense
and constant debate on a list serve run by Professor Toyin Falola –
SAAFRICADIALOGUE. In the run up to the 50th anniversary celebration of
Nigeria’s independence, the key issue of concern to the community was
fraud and the Emeagwali narratives. Anyone that has googled

Nigerian achievers
on the Internet would have come across the “great achievements” of one
Philip Emeagwali. The question posed was whether he is the greatest
Nigerian achiever in the contemporary world or a monumental fraudster?

In the numerous
citations about his so-called achievements, we read that he has a PhD
in scientific computing from the University of Michigan, that he is the
father of the Internet and the inventor of super computers.

He claims to have
invented 41 patented devices including a timing device, non-capsizable
container, sweepstake programmer, random unit generator amusement
device, and bidirectional monitoring and control system and so on. In
an interview by Susan Henderson for the book African-American
Inventors, Philip Emeagwali presented his achievements in the following
manner: “…Invented methods and procedures for making computers faster
and more powerful. These methods enabled me to perform the world’s
fastest computation of 3.1 billion calculations per second in 1989 and
solve the largest weather forecasting equations with 128 million points
in 1990. Programmed a computer with 65,000 processors to outperform the
fastest supercomputer and thereby proving that it is best to use many
processors in designing supercomputers. Successfully implemented the
first petroleum reservoir model on a massively parallel computer in
1989. As a result, one in 10 parallel supercomputers is used to find
and recover additional oil and gas. Solved one of America’s 20 Grand
Challenges – accurately computing how oil flows underground and thereby
alerting the petroleum industry that massively parallel computers can
be used to recover more oil. Only 30 percent of the oil in a reservoir
can be recovered and this discovery will enable oil companies to
recover more oil. Invented a new approach of designing supercomputers
by observing and emulating patterns in nature. Formulated new
mathematical (partial differential) equations for slowly moving liquids
and gases such as the flow within the Earth’s interior.”

Under Olusegun
Obasanjo, the Nigerian Government invited and celebrated Philip
Emeagwali as one of our shining stars in the Diaspora. This was at a
time in which there were claims that the best Nigerian brains are
abroad and we should bring them back to develop our country. Those of
us in the country were considered failures that could not get positions
abroad.

The problem with
Philip is that the university has now revealed that he never completed
his doctorate degree and checks at the United States Patent and
Trademark office did not show up patents with the name Philip
Emeagwali. He has not published in any reputable peer reviewed journal.
The conclusion is that narratives about his achievements are a fraud.

The claims about
his achievements have however been cleverly spread in numerous web
sites, and today many curricula on African and Black achievements have
him as a star example. Black youth in Europe go around with his
photographs in their school bags determined to be as “great” as
Emeagwali when they grow up.

One of the most
poignant aspects of the saga is the manner in which Gloria Thomas
Emeagwali was dragged into the debate. Gloria is a top ranked professor
of history in the United States. She is a good friend of mine from our
days as junior lecturers in Ahmadu Bello University in the early 1980s.
At that time, she was recovering from a bitter divorce with a different
Emeagwali who had studied with her in Trinidad and Tobago, married her
and brought her to Nigeria where she suffered a lot of abuse. To her
shock, she found her photograph cut and pasted on Philip Emeagwali’s
web site with the fraudulent claim that she is his wife. She put a
disclaimer on her own web page and has sued him in court.

When she drew
attention to this in the on-going debate, many questioned her
sincerity. As one commentator put it “”Emeagwali” is not a common name,
like Okeke, Okafor or Ojo. We know not whether Gloria bears ANY past or
present relationship with Philip beyond a common last name.” The
suspicion was that she might be his estranged wife trying to get at
him, which is extremely unfair allegation for the Gloria I know. At
that point, the debate got dirty between so called Igbo bashers and
Igbo defenders derailing the core issue about fraudulent claims of this
man. The most painful issue of the debate is that Nigeria bashers in
the United States are now singing narratives about how most Nigerian
academics in the country are 419 scholars.

We have great Nigerian scholars at home and abroad. We also have
great fraudsters at home and abroad. Not all that is abroad is good.