Victor Odigie Naiwu Odiase was a senior lecturer at the University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria. He was born in Owo, Nigeria on 25 March 1935, the first child of Bernard Onaiwu Odiase, an administrator and later chairman of the Benin Central Local School Board, and Adepate Odiase née Bello, the daughter of a police officer. His younger brother also became a doctor. Odiase attended Edo College in Benin City and then studied medicine at University College, Ibadan. He qualified in 1961. He was a house surgeon and physician in Ibadan, and then went to the UK, where he was a senior house officer at Luton and Dunstaple Hospital and a registrar at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. Odiase gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1966 and of England in 1967. He was influenced by Brian McNeill Truscott and William Wilkin Davey. He returned to Nigeria, where he was appointed as a senior lecturer at the University of Benin. He enjoyed fishing and playing music, especially the piano. In 1963, he married Margaret Bowditch. They had two sons and two daughters. Tragically, Odiase and his wife were both killed in a car accident in Nigeria in 1984.