Obi (Prof) Joseph Chike Edozien, the monarch of Asaba, Delta State has passed on at the ripe age of 99.
Reports from Asaba indicate that he joined his ancestors on Wednesday.
The news of the monarch’s demise filtered in on Thursday with residents of the state capital describing his death as a great loss to the kingdom.
A source from the palace of the monarch confirmed that the retired university don and the medical doctor passed but would not give further details.
According to a Wikipedia reference of the deceased monarch and medical expert, he attended the Catholic School in Warri from 1933 to 1937. He attended Christ the Kings College, Onitsha for his secondary education from 1938 to 1942. In 1942 he attended the Higher College Yaba and then proceeded to Achimota School, Accra, Ghana.
His university education began with admission to the University College Dublin, Ireland in 1944. He completed his BSc with honours in Physiology from the National University of Ireland in 1948, MSc in Physiology in 1950, and Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBCh) in 1954. He won several academic awards in the process.
At the University College, Ibadan, he was appointed a professor in 1961 and became the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in 1962.
Outside Nigeria, Edozien was appointed a professor of Nutrition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT) Cambridge, MA. In 1971 he became a professor and head of the Department of Nutrition, of the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina (UNC)
Obi Edozien was one of the elders and traditional leaders of Ohanaeze Nd’Igbo and once advocated at a World Igbo Conference in Owerri in about 2005 where he was the chairman that the South East fights to get an additional state that would involve the Anioma of Delta State being joined to the region.
Edozien, during the Nigeria-Biafra War, was on the side of Biafra and when declared an enemy by the Nigerian government fled to France where he lived in exile and later relocated to the USA to work at the MIT and UNC
