Nigeria’s first female Vice Chancellor, Professor Grace Alele-Williams has passed on at 89 on Friday, March 25.
The circumstances surrounding her death are unclear as at the time of filing this report.
Her burial arrangement is to be announced by the family later, TheNation reports.
Born in Warri, Delta state, Prof Alele-Williams attended Government School, Warri; Queen’s College, Lagos and the University College of Ibadan (now University of Ibadan).
She obtained a master’s degree in mathematics while teaching at Queen’s School, Ede in Osun State in 1957 and her PhD degree in mathematics education at the University of Chicago (U.S.) in 1963, thereby making her the first Nigerian woman to be awarded a doctorate.
Alele-Williams returned to Nigeria for a couple of years’ postdoctoral work at the University of Ibadan before joining the University of Lagos in 1965.
Ms Alele-Williams, a professor of mathematics gained prominence after she was appointed the vice-chancellor of the prestigious University of Benin in 1985. Her tenure witnessed a drastic reduction in cultism, a menace in UNIBEN at the time.
Before her appointment as vice-chancellor, she made history as the first Nigerian woman to obtain a doctorate degree in Mathematics education in 1963, a rare feat in the sixties.
President Muhammadu Buhari had facilitated with the former VC on her 89th birthday in December 2021, applauding her role in sanitising UNIBEN of cultism.
May her soul rest in peace.
