Nigeria’s ability to safeguard its financial systems and digital communications rests heavily on the strength of mathematical innovation, according to Oluwole Familoni, chairman, and board of trustees at Pastor Enoch Adeboye Professorial Chair in Mathematics.
Familoni, in his address at the 2026 Pastor Enoch Adeboye Chair in Mathematics annual lecture, said, “The security of our financial systems, the protection of digital communication, and many technologies that power modern life depend on mathematical ideas developed by scholars who simply refused to stop asking questions.”
He further said that supporting mathematics, therefore, is not an indulgence in theory, but an investment in national capacity and future security.
The university don emphasised that from cybersecurity encryption to secure banking transactions and data protection, mathematical principles form the backbone of the technologies that power and protect the nation’s digital economy.
“We sometimes forget that the most abstract branches of mathematics often produce the most practical consequences,” he noted.
He applauded Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God whose generosity gave birth to the initiative, the University of Lagos leadership for their unwavering support, members of the board for their diligence and guidance, and to the Department of Mathematics for continuously upholding high standards.
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Going down memory lane, Familoni recounted how Pastor Enoch Adeboye Professorial Chair in Mathematics was established in 2009 when he was the dean of science.
“I was privileged to receive the cheque of N50 million given then by the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). This N50 million has been diligently invested and used in the appointment of three wonderful, highly cerebral professors who occupied this exalted professorial chair and have contributed to the development of the department of mathematics at the University of Lagos and the nation at large.
“Specifically, the area of algebra, which lacked specialists for some time before the arrival of the chair occupiers. When this Professorial Chair in Mathematics was established, it was never intended to be ceremonial. It was meant to work. It was meant to strengthen teaching, deepen research, and place this University firmly on the global mathematical map,” he noted.
Temitope Jaiyeola, a professor of Mathematics at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, while delivering his lecture, the third ‘Chair Occupier’s’ emphasised that Nigeria’s digital economy needs homegrown security solutions using mathematical models.
“Nigeria’s digital economy needs homegrown security solutions. The theoretical foundations laid in our work on quasi-group-based cryptography should be advanced towards prototype development.
“Partnerships with industry and cybersecurity agencies should be sought to test and adapt these mathematical models,” he said.
Moreover, Jaiyeola said that Mathematics is often described as the language of science, a language through which we express the patterns, symmetries, and structures that underlie our universe.
“Beyond its service to the natural sciences, mathematics is first and foremost a way of thinking, a disciplined art of reasoning, abstraction, and logical creativity. At its heart, mathematics seeks to understand relationships between numbers, shapes, operations, or even ideas.
“From the earliest attempts to count stones and measure land, human curiosity has always pushed toward uncovering the hidden regularities in seemingly diverse phenomena,” he emphasised.
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Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, chairman of the governing council of the Redeemer’s University of Nigeria (RUN), who chaired the 2026 annual lecture, said the event is not just an academic exercise, but a means to inspire the audience to embrace mathematics.
“To our students, embrace mathematics with courage, for it unlocks innovation. To our faculty, continue to network minds with patience and rigor. To our leaders, invest in mathematics for innovation that blends the spiritual.
“However, I laughed when, recently, it was declared that mathematics is not a compulsory subject today. To get to the university standard, I think it was the reverse. Maybe it was divine intervention that made them reverse it. Because everything we do now is about mathematics,” Ogundipe said.
