Word: nigerians
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...Nigeria formally severed with the British Empire following 160 years of colonial rule, and soon thereafter appointed Nnamdi Azikiwe its head of state. As fanfare and festivities erupted that week in the city of Lagos, roughly 30 Nigerian students attending universities in the Boston area celebrated remotely, alongside then-Harvard undergraduate Chukwuma B. Azikiwe ’63, son of the man who would soon take the helm of the most populous nation in Africa...
Around the world, heads turned toward the sovereign nation in its infancy—especially Harvard’s. Earlier that spring, Harvard was one of about 20 American colleges to lay the groundwork for the Nigerian-American Scholarship Program, a year-long pilot project that provided four-year scholarships to two dozen Nigerian students who enrolled in universities across...
Ohiri played for the Nigerian Olympic soccer team at the 1960 games in Rome, where he scored two goals during the qualifying rounds. He had also qualified for the Olympics in the triple jump—which he turned down to focus on soccer—but would go on to be one of the most decorated track and field athletes in Harvard history, holding the triple jump record for four decades. “He was a phenomenon,” Malin said...
Though Ohiri and the other Nigerian recruits were not the first students to attend Harvard from Nigeria—Malin said he recalls admits in the classes of 1954 and 1959—there was an expectation that the handful of African students selected each year would return to their home countries to become political and intellectual leaders...
Zacchaeus O. Okurounmu ’63—now known as Olufemi Okurounmu—one of the other Nigerian students selected by Henry, graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in engineering. In an interview with The Crimson immediately following Nigerian independence in 1960, Okurounmu said that his academic interests were fueled by “much need” for Nigerian expertise in infrastructure. Okurounmu subsequently served as a Senator in the Nigerian legislature...