Thread by @RealOlaudah

On this night exactly 54 years ago the then Registrar of UNN and its first indigenous, Mr Vincent Ike, now HRH Eze Prof. Chukwuemeka Ike, performed one of the most heroic feats in the University's history.

It was supposed to be the 4th Convocation, a ceremony always greeted with lots of fanfare, being a nascent University that already blazed the trail among its contemporaries, also as having broken series of records in the country's higher learning space.

It was to be at prestigious Akanu Ibiam Stadium UNN, same ground on which Nationalists like Chief Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello became the pioneer Honorands of that great institution. This should paint you a mental picture of how hallowed the ground and the receptions on it were.

Parents and relations at the time fantasized about attending a University of Nigeria convocation from all parts of the country despite how limited and insufficient transportation may have been compared to the way it is today.

But, all that would not be, because of the political situation in the country which had attained a violent crescendo. The next day, May 30, was to be the famed Ojukwu broadcast, intending to be that declaration of secession, famously known as "The zero hour broadcast".

Mr Vincent Ike having prevailed on the University leadership, informed the Eastern Broadcasting Service to announce that the convocation had been done so that parents and relations already set to attend would bother not coming; asking them to sit back at home and listen to the...

broadcast instead. He later sent circulars to all graduating students to converge at the Princess Alexandria Auditorium that night for the collection of their certificates, without the usual ceremony that followed.

Why?
He said: "since the two sides (Nigeria and Biafra to be) were poised for a showdown and Federal troops speedily advancing towards Obollo Afor, Akanu Ibiam stadium in full capacity would have been a choice target for the Nigerian war planes to strafe".

The students were marooned in the Princess Alexandria hall at night with the lights off, given their certificates, & were all told to vacate the campus first thing in the morning. They bade themselves goodbye with half of that population never to be seen again. The war took them.

Those set of graduating students of 1967, became known as "The Zero Hour Graduates". Prof. Theophilus Nwala is a living witness and a "Zero hour graduate" among a few others.

The University would later be utterly invaded and vandalized, and many of its students killed either as soldiers or as Biafran civilians. Mr Vincent Ike saved the University by "escaping" with many of its vital records and documents which without them would have caused the...

discontinuity of the University of Nigeria.
An individual like Vincent Ike should have been duly immortalized, with his bust in a very strategic site in the University of Nigeria.

© Izuu Muoneme
Excerpts from "Timeline in the Dem" oncoming publication.