Nigeria’s first female Vice Chancellor, Professor Grace Alele-Williams is dead. She died on Friday at the age of 89 years.
Although information about her demise was still sketchy as of press time Friday evening, her death was posted on a WhatsApp group having prominent Itsekiris as members.
“The education icon and great Mathematician, Prof. Grace Alele Williams, has gone to be with the Lord. May her soul rest in peace,” a post by one Femi Uwawah, read.
Ex Delta State governor, Chief Ibori, mourned her passing, saying she influenced him while he (Ibori) was an undergraduate.
Ibori in a statement issued yesterday by his Media Assistant, Tony Eluemunor, said: “Alele -Williams’ life imparted greatly on mine as she was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin while I was a student there. I remember her as an outstanding woman of integrity and one of those who showed my feet the way to follow.”
The former governor sent his condolences to the Itsekiri nation and Delta state, whose histories Alele-Williams decorated with her trail-blazing life; as the first Nigerian woman to earn a PhD in Mathematics and the first female Vice-Chancellor of a Nigerian University.
“I regret her passing even as I thank God for the pace-setting life she lived as a high -achiever”, he said.
The professor of Mathematics Education, was born on December 16, 1932.
She made history as the first Nigerian female vice-chancellor at the University of Benin and first Nigerian woman to receive a doctorate.
Alele-Williams was born in Warri, Delta state. She attended Government School, Warri, Queen’s College, Lagos and the University College of Ibadan[8] (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. She returned to Nigeria for a couple of years’ postdoctoral work at the University of Ibadan before joining the University of Lagos in 1965.
Her teaching career started at Queen’s School, Ede, Osun State, where she was a mathematics teacher from 1954 to 1957. She left for the University of Vermont to become a graduate assistant and later assistant professor. From 1963 to 1965, Alele-Williams was a postdoctoral research fellow, department (and institute) of education, University of Ibadan from where she was appointed a professor of mathematics at the University of Lagos in 1976.
She was appointed the first female Vice-Chancellor of a Nigerian university in 1985, and she believes her appointment at the University of Benin, which ended in 1992, was a test case to demonstrate a woman’s executive capability. Among her honors are Fellow of the Mathematical Association of Nigeria, Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Education, merit award winner of Bendel State in Nigeria, and regional vice-president for Africa of the Third World Organization for Women in Science” (Science in Africa: Women Leading from Strength AAAS, Washington, 1993, p.174). It may be added that professor Alele-Williams was chairman of the African Mathematical Union Commission for Women in Mathematics.
Alele-Williams married Babatunde Abraham Williams December 1963, not long after returning to Nigeria from the United States. Williams was a political scientist who, at the time of their marriage, was a senior lecturer at the University of Ife, Osun State. As of 2017, Alele-Williams had five children and ten grandchildren.
Source: The Nation
