Buhari Describes Adebanwi, Just Appointed Professor At Oxford University, As African Gem

President Muhammadu Buhari has described Nigerian author and scholar, Wale Adebanwi, who has just been appointed as Rhodes Professor in Race Relations in the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, as an African gem and role model who has brought honour and respect to the continent.
“As the first black African scholar to be appointed to the endowed Chair since it was created more than 60 years ago, President Buhari affirms that Prof. Adebanwi’s sharp intellect and distinguished learning is worthy of emulation by other young Nigerians.”
Buhari, in a statement by his senior special assistant on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, said that he had maintained a keen interest in the soaring profile of the scholar right from his early years in journalism in Nigeria to a lecturer in the University of Ibadan, and that he is delighted to see him achieve this much very early in his life.
President Buhari said that at just 47 years of age, the young African like Adebanwi is showing the wit, steadfastness, creative energy and astuteness of renowned African writer and intellectual, in the mould of Professor Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, John Pepper Clark and Abubakar Imam who put the continent on the world’s knowledge map.
“He is a source of pride and inspiration to Black Africa as a whole,” the President even as he wished the distinguished scholar more successes as he clinches laurel upon laurel on his steady rise as a scholar of international distinction. [myad]