The Editorial Board of NAIJA STANDARD Newspaper comprising of all Editors and Directors have unanimously adjudged Honuorable Ugo Nwaokoro, Nigerian born Deputy Mayor of Newark in New Jersey, USA as its Man of the Year 2016.

Ugo, a soft-spoken thinker, humble with utmost dedication to the good service of humanity with clear-directional lead by Mayor Ras Baraka has ensured that Newark is home to more than 280,000 residents and a large international immigrant community. This is a major state in the whole of America where legal Africans from various nations, in their different languages who naturalised as African-Americans lawfully co-exist peacefully without any strife, arguments or violence.

Office of the Mayor in City of Newark situated along 920 Broad Street, especially the International Relations and Diaspora Affairs’ office has become a beehive of activities, as Ugo leads the transformation ideology in New Jersey, which has made these various tribes to live together by way of one-big-family.

Ugo's positively-impacting economic policies have cohesively brought the people of different colors, ethnic backgrounds and religious varieties together. Today, he is seen in America as the invincible hand behind these lofty accomplishments.

Persons of the year award winners

In the ‘Persons of the Year Award’ category, three Nigerian-Americans stand out in the Diaspora; they are Dr. Osato Osemwengie, Expert in NASA Deep Space Robotics, Dr. Bennet Omalu, leading Physician/Neuropathologist, and Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye, foremost Paediatrics Surgeon in Texas.

Dr. Osato Osemwengie is the brain behind America’s drone creativity. He works in The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at Space Electromechanics Inc, having studied Unmanned Aircraft Systems at the Ohio State University, University of Cincinnati, University of New York and Regis University remains one of the shining lights that ever came out of Nigeria.

He is originally from Edo State but is flying high, the flag of Africa’s most populous black nation in the United States of America. He is an embodiment of excellence in the academic circle.

Osemwengie, a focused and detribalised Nigerian believes education is the strongest weapon to fight ignorance and poverty. Having accomplished so much in the education sector in America, he has bagged six Master’s degrees in various disciplines and pursuing his fourth PhD at the University of Texas, Dallas. He is a Nigerian who builds drones for the United States Army.

Dr. Bennet Omalu, a foremost forensic pathologist who identified and named a brain disease directly related to high impact sports called the National Football League’s Play Smart, while deriding Play Safe initiative as a sham, is a highly successful, cerebral Nigerian-American Physician who discovered and named Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive, irreversible, degenerative disease in people – mostly athletes – who have had a severe blow or repeated blows to the head. In a remarkable lecture at Westminster College’s two-day Hancock Symposium last year, he declared that “Nothing will change since its symptoms can appear as many as 40 years after the damage was done.”

Omalu earlier portrayed by actor Will Smith in the 2015 movie Concussion told the audience how the NFL ‘professionally ostracised’ him and tried to discredit him when he discovered and announced CTE.

Emphatically, he states: “Based on what we now know, children under the age of 18 should not be allowed to play football, hockey, box, wrestle or participate in other contact sports because such body contacts can literally rattle the youths’ brains “that is like floating balloons inside their skulls.”

Omalu, who is of the Igbo tribe, is the Chief Medical Examiner of San Joaquin County, CA. He serves as a Clinical Professor and Associate Physician Diplomate at the University of California-Davis Medical Center, Department of Medical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye is a Paediatric Surgeon in Texas, who had Fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

Olutoye worked in conjunction with Dr. Darrell Cass, his surgeon partner when they performed an operation on a pregnant woman that had tumour and successfully removed her 23 weeks old baby, extract the tumour, and returned the baby back into the mother’s womb; while the baby developed and was finally given birth to at 36 weeks as a normal child without any Cesarian section.

Dr. Olutoye whose praise will continue to be on the lips of people for a long time to come has been trending on the social media across the world. This news about the Nigerian surgeon became a viral sensation after the information about a baby that was born twice was shared.

Olutoye and Cass carried out an operation on a baby at 23 weeks. The baby was removed from her mother’s womb when they discovered she was suffering from a tumour known as sacrococcygeal teratoma. The operation was successfully carried out and the baby was returned back. Amazingly, the baby healed and continued to grow until she was born again at 36 weeks. This is a remarkable feat in modern medicine. It is exciting to know that a Nigerian surgeon was part of this setup. Lynlee Hope was given a chance to be born normal because of the surgeons who tried their best possible. Olutoye happens to be the co-director of the Texas children’s fetal center and fetal surgery team member.

This well praised doctor received his medical degree in 1988 from the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He proceeded to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond where he got his PhD in anatomy in 1996.

It was at the medical college of Virginia hospitals that he completed his residency in general surgery. His fellowship was done in pediatric surgery at the children’s hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. As a member of the international fetal medicine and surgery society, Olutoye is also a member of the surgical section of the American academy of pediatrics and American College of Surgeons. As a Nigerian, he has come a long way when it comes to medicine. Without doubt, this humble Nigerian surgeon has brought glory to Nigeria.

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