Understandably, there was a lot of controversy
generated by my article regarding one Philip Emeagwali and his purported fatherhood of the Internet.
In particular, the article elicited some strange outbursts from Philip Emeagwali himself. Controversy
or not, I will continue to express my opinion if and when I encounter his particular brand of abusive self-promotion
and self-authentication.
Thanks to some friends, I am well aware of Philip Emeagwali's dubious "rebuttal" to my original piece.
It did not deserve a full response from me at that time because Mr. Emeagwali failed to submit the so-called "rebuttal"
to BNW for publication. In his tirade, he accused me of being paid by some phantom white supremacist group. This
was followed by a weak attempt by Philip Emeagwali to drag others into the gutter with him by suggesting that other
people were the authors of MY article. Philip Emeagwali is free to cry racism for all that it is worth. It will not change a thing.
In either case, this footnote to my article about Philip Emeagwali is rather significant. It so happens that today, December 31, 2003, BBC News reported that “[t]he inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, has been awarded a knighthood for his pioneering work.”
Never
mind that Philip Emeagwali may soon begin to innundate us with unsolicited details about the difference between
the Internet and the World Wide Web. Don't be fooled. The way Emeagwali states his megalomeniacal claims of Internet fatherhood leaves no doubt that he fully intends such fatherhood to encompass the World Wide Web. Apparently, Mr. Berners-Lee is very well-known
for his work, and as is tradition in giving honors for work of such distinction, he did not need to submit an application
before he was recognized for his work. 
On the front page of the article on BBC, he is standing next to none other than one of the darkest
black men in the world - the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in front of a background which reads
“where the
web was born.” Perhaps
like myself, Annan is also a paid agent of racists (after all, he married a white woman), or perhaps like me, Kofi
Annan has been paid by Emeagwali’s white supremacist enemies. That must be the reason why Annan is honoring Berners-Lee
and not Emeagwali.
But to give Annan the benefit of the doubt, I can only say at this point that I am sure Philip Emeagwali’s invitation to address the United Nations regarding his fathering of the
Internet is in the mail, just as I am equally certain that it is just a matter of time before he is called to England
to be knighted by the Queen. Only time will tell. Unlike Maazi Philip Emeagwali who calls himself Africa's "super brain,"
Berners-Lee calls himself "ordinary people." What a contrast! Meanwhile, ordinary people such as Berners-Lee,
who are known to be “famously modest”, will continue
to be honored even when they don't apply for the honors. The sooner Emeagwali learns
honesty followed by modesty, the sooner he will start having some real inventions for which accolades from UN Secretaries
General and queens will come.
In the meantime, I have confirmed that Philip Emeagwali's claim that he owns a patent for inventing a "hyperball
computer" is false. To quote an expert in the field of patent and intellectual property law (name withheld), "Philip
Emeagwali does not own any patent of any kind in the US or anywhere else in the world where there is a developed
patent system." Thus, the allegedly "patented hyperball computer" exists only at emeagwali.com and in Philip Emeagwali's deluded
imaginations; it is, as we say in Nigeria, 419.