Anayo  Nkamnebe
WILLIAM Shakespeare in the Twelfth Night captured three distinct routes to greatness. According to him, “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them”.

Professor Godwin Enwelum Onyemaeke Ogum was not born great; rather he achieved greatness through unwavering belief in integrity and industry. Greatness in the case of Professor Ogum is not measured merely by what he achieved for himself, but, most importantly, by what he quietly achieved through making others better.

This perhaps provides the justification and joy to celebrate Prof. Ogum as a distinguished Nigerian and Professor of Statistics & Demography as he retires from the ivory tower.

Without doubt, the countless number of people Prof. Ogum touched their lives directly and indirectly will remain indebted to him. Part of the unique contributions of Prof. Ogum is the unmatched passion to advocate and in some cases provide material and other supports for people and communities to deploy the powers of education for self and community development.

He lives his entire life educating people and emphasizing the paramount role of integrity in men affair. Most importantly, he is a man of integrity!

By background and by training, Prof. Ogum was born in Unubi, Anambra State in the days when greatness is measured by the number of flocks, barns of yam, and even wives one has; western education was not that popular. Indeed, Prof. Ogum belongs to the first generation of Unubi that acquired university education.

Yet, he grew up to be a man of astute dematerialized character who put “excellence of mind and spirit above material considerations”. He attended New Bethel College Onitsha where he met Late Professor B.O. Ukeje who had unquantifiable influence on him as a mathematician and academic disciplinarian of rare breed.

Immediately after his doctorate at JohnsHopkinsUniversity, he did not wait for the ceremony of graduation; neither did he give a second thought to the opportunities which United States offers, Prof. Ogum dashed home to contribute in nation building, which was urgent then. He was employed as a Lecturer II in the Department of Statistics, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, his alma mata.

He was having very rewarding career and enormous opportunities at the University when true to his character he chose to transfer to the newly created Anambra State College of Education, Awka to assist in training younger generation of Nigerian teachers.

This singular show of patriotism helped in no small way to produce mathematics teachers at the young college who carried on the task of promoting mathematics education at primary and secondary schools in Nigeria. When the College was restructured, he again left it to join hand in building a newly created Anambra State University of Technology that later renamed Nnamdi Azikiwe University.

Steady advance

He advanced steadily in his career and rose to the rank of a Professor. He held a number of positions as Head of Department, Dean of Faculty, Member of Senate and Council, and finally emerged the first Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Indeed, his colleagues and students describe him as the best Vice Chancellor Nnamdi Azikiwe University never had. At professional level, his contributions and services were felt heavily in the area of population management for development. Among others, he was a consultant for the United Nations Population Funds.

He played various invited role in other universities, research institutes, government agencies and international institutions. He is prolific in writing; he authored and co-authored several books for primary, secondary and university level mathematics/statistics texts. His many scholarly articles appeared in learned journals and he is a novelist and regular contributor to newspapers and newsmagazines.

Despite Prof. Ogum’s high profile achievements, he never detached himself from his rural connections. He deployed his educational accomplishments to the emancipation of rural people from ignorance and poverty.

His effort in promoting mathematics education at rural schools is unprecedented and ordinary people that would never have had the privilege of western education succeeded in doing so through his mentorship.

He played many roles as community leader, which culminated to his role as President-General of Unubi Development Union and after that became the Regent of the community. It was through this period that he promoted the Ohazurume philosophy as a veritable tool for community governance that requires every hand to be on deck in driving unity and development.

Your name Professor GEO Ogum impacted profoundly in my life from 2001 when I was appointed the pioneer VC of the eventually renamed Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU) Awka. I had just taken up appointment when admission into the Faculty of Medicine developed a glitch that needed a person of proven integrity to sought out. You were recommended to me as such as person and you certainly addressed the problem so admirably and competently.

We worked so cordially and positively that I can state unequivocally that NAU is today, and for immediate foreseeable future, the product of its early sound origin by wholly dedicated, unselfish and indefatigable pioneer staff as you and others represented…You could not be faulted for proven sincerity, discipline, self-expression and excellence… Always kind, calm and cool headed, you could, and did, face burning issues both academic and administrative, with remarkable exemplary equanimity”

Above testimony about Prof. Ogum is echoed by others who worked very close with him. For instance, Sir Ngozi Anyakora, the pioneer Registrar of Anambra State College of Education Awka and Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka have these impressions about Prof. Ogum: “I found a treasure in him… What endured Prof. Ogum to me and all those who have had the privilege of experiencing him, is his integrity, the monarch of all virtues. With that virtue he carved a niche for himself in men’s minds, and thus made himself generally acceptable as a popular choice for positions that require honesty and truth.”

It is easy to see that Prof. Ogum, like a shooting star broke loose from his companions and shot himself to the height of eminence and prominence”. Sir Anyakora most rightly summed up the reality about Prof. Ogum in the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who in his Ladder of Saint Augustine philosophised thus; “the height by greatmen reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their compatriot slept were toiling upward in the night”.

The noble and godly personality of Prof. Ogum is contagious. Sir Emmanuel Agorom seems to support this assertion when he confessed that “…our relationship with you in so short a time frame has been very robust, exciting, spiritually rewarding, quite exemplary, and has continued to deepen our understanding and appreciation of the positive impact that scholarship, unassuming simplicity, maturity, royalty, wisdom and tradition, when grown and domiciled in a humane and cultured personality, hold for humanity”.

In a similar vein, one of the former mentees of Professor Ogum, Chike J. Aguh, a Clinical Asst. Prof. of Obstetrics/Gynaecology & Reproductive Services New Jersey Medical School in describing Prof. Ogum opines that “legends don’t come to every generation, my generation has been lucky to have you as a role model”. This expression aptly captures how the teeming disciples of Prof. Ogum view him. Prof. Ogum is a master mentor. I am certain he must have lost count of all the people he mentored.

Indeed, if ones retirement is a period for stock taking, then, Prof. Ogum’s retirement from the university has enormous evidence of years of service to humanity and substantial accomplishments to warrant special thanksgiving to God, not just for the life He gave him, but also, for giving him as gift to humanity. He has not wasted any of his years! For the much we know about him, life is about honest service to others and his passion for integrity is uncommon especially in the present Nigeria where selfishness has become the order of the day.

For all those you influenced either directly or indirectly, we are proud of your service to this country and to humanity. We recognise your role during the Nigeria-Biafra Civil war, as a postgraduate student at the University of Ghana Legon, you sacrificed your comfort and safety to join other compatriots in drawing the attention of the world to the deteriorating human conditions in Biafra. For all your career years that span about forty-years, through your honest academic and administrative roles, you contributed in developing Nigeria’s educational system and deploying education as a veritable tool for development.

Upon completing your doctorate at the Johns Hopkins University Maryland USA, you quickly dashed home and effectively utilised education to push back the frontier of ignorance among your people and played no mean role in helping to nurture teachers of mathematics for our nation’s scientific advancement. At grass-root level, you worked so hard to make modern development a reality among your people and other rural communities. Within the religious circle, your efforts were equally recognised.

At this moment in Nigeria’s development trajectory, people like you are dearly needed to reinvent and sustain the vision of our nationhood. Testimonies about you give us hope that this nation is after all not deprive of persons with unwavering spirit of nationalism who are working silently in building Nigeria to greatness; people who never mind that their efforts are not sung publicly. One day this nation will surely remember your kind; even if it delays, posterity will surely remember and celebrate you.

Though Prof. Ogum has disengaged from active and regular duties, happily, he is still available in good health. Hopefully, his residence near the campus and his easily accessible country home will continue to be the focal point for regular consultations and mentoring. We are happy that even though you have formally disengaged from the ivory tower, your presence is still present. Fortunate are we to have still available the integrity, the insight, and the love which are the measure of your stature and the nation will continue to enjoy from your wealth of knowledge.