Photo: Africafeeds
The Federal Government, yesterday in Abuja, said Nigerian born outstanding world-renowned surgeon, Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye, who operated in-utero surgery on fetuses with large tumours while still in their mother’s womb would be honoured with the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) in medicine.
In science category, Prof. Godwin Ekhaguere would also be awarded while an outstanding mathematician, late Prof. Charles Chidume would equally be honoured with the laureate.
Speaking at a press conference, Chairman of the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA), Prof. Shekarau Aku, who noted that President Muhammadu Buhari would award the winners in the coming weeks, said only the three experts met the criteria out of the 46 nominees for the 2020 and 2021 nominations.
Disclosing that the nomination for the current year was already on, Aku said the awards remained critical to national development across key sectors of the nation’s economy.
Aku said Olutayo’s feat, which made him the first African and Nigerian to perform such surgery, reverberated all over the world and brought immense prominence to Nigeria.
He noted that Chidume’s contribution in nonlinear functional of fixed point, analysis, nonlinear operator theory and differential equations, the introduction of new and powerful iterative algorithm stood the scholar out.
While congratulating the experts, he noted that Ekhaguere’s outstanding work in mathematics, physics, non-commutative stochastic analysis, topological partial-algebras and financial mathematics created a new direction in mathematics while deploying the outcomes to solve outstanding problems in the branch of mathematical physics called axiomatic quantum field theory.
