Controversy has trailed the claim that a lecturer at the University of Maiduguri, Dr Yakubu Nuru, won the World Physics Competition.

Announcement of the award, which went viral on the social media a few days ago, had been celebrated by media professional, Kadara Ahmed, and Kaduna State politician, Senator Shehu Sani.

Sani, in particular, had called on northern governors and the President to celebrate Nuru’s feat.

It had been claimed that Nuru defeated 5,720 ‘contenders’ in 97 countries to emerge winner of the award, which made him ‘the Father of Modern Einstein’s Planetary Equation Studies in Physics.’

But on Monday, a social commentator, Dr Farooq Kperogi, said the award was fraudulent.

Kperogi, an associate professor of journalism, on Twitter said aside from the fact that the organisers of the award did not have a website, the award was given at a fee.

“The truth is that Dr. Nura is the willing victim of a scam, a kind of scam I call scams of ego, which prey on the status anxieties and low self-esteem of insecure, fraud-prone people.

“World Championship, the ‘organisation’ that conferred the ‘award’ on Dr. Nura, is a well-known scam operation that does not, for strategically fraudulent reasons, have a site with its own domain name. It uses a free https://t.co/KM4wFOxvng account to perpetrate its scams.

“Anyone who pays a fee can get any—I mean any—award from the site. Check the site https://t.co/XklKzkRvXV to see the list of ‘award winners’ it features in every imaginable field. You will find many Nigerians there,” he wrote.

Kperogi pointed out that some of the past Nigerian winners had also publicised their feats in the media to gain popularity.

“For instance, one Dr. Kaywood Leizou of the Niger Delta University (NDU) got the Guardian to write a story about his ‘award’ from this same fraudulent site on Oct 19, 2018. Titled ‘Bayelsa don wins global chemical sciences contest’.

“In 2018, the same website ‘conferred’ one Dr. Shuaib Idris Mohammed of Edo State with the ‘World Champion in Agricultural Extension (Credit Facilities)’ award ‘out of 91 countries.’