MONOLOGUE
Today is another day of historic glory in Lagos. All ways from different parts of Nigeria will lead to the Centre of Excellence. At the instance of ‘Vanguard Newspaper’, a gathering of Nigeria’s who is who will take place, once again, and, the venue is ‘Eko Hotel and Suites’, at Victoria Island, where a glorious recognition session will be held in honour of some great Nigerians who deserve honour. Among those to be honoured are some outstanding personalities in various fields of human endeavour. The occasion is meant to be a show of recognition to certain patriotic Nigerians, as an incentive for their relentlessness in excellent performance, in public or private service.
The most likely personality to be focused, at today’s occasion, is the current Registrar/CEO of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede, OFR, FNAL, who is being honoured as the Most Stabilizer of Nigeria’s education sector in the current dispensation.
Oloyede has consistently won similar awards from the topmost Nigerian newspapers, since the past five years. As a matter of fact, it has become a fierce annual competition among the foremost Nigerian newspapers, to crown this enigmatic icon with a glorious honour.
This article is similar to what yours sincerely wrote, in this column, five years ago (2017), when Daily ‘Graphic’ newspaper first garlanded him with a wreath of honour, as the ‘Most Outstanding Personality’ in Nigeria’s public service. Incidentally, this is the time which the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), considers most appropriate to honour the same Oloyede with the prestigious international award of the Most Outstanding Advocate of Equal Opportunity of Higher Education in Africa. He was rated far above his African competitors in this unique educational sphere.
Professor Oloyede’s incomparable honesty and unique patriotism
at this period of epic corruption, especially in public service, in Nigeria, have become a special blessing in historic point of reference that can never be effaced by any historical adulteration.
PARTICLES OF HISTORY
For every age of human life, there are particles of history that relay to us the successes or failures of the previous ages. And, from such successes or failures, humanity may endeavour to draw a guide for itself, which may serve, either as a warning on the vanity of uman wishes or as encouragement or both.
At a time like this, when anything new and progressive is a great reminder of the sad flight of hope in Nigeria and its replacement by despair, it only behooves some die hard optimists to take a positive and progressive leap as an indication that all is not lost in our country, after all.
One of such optimists is Professor Oloyede who does not see patriotism as a mere theory but rather vigorously practicalizes it as a template of permanent hope. The international honour, which was announced, a couple of days ago, by a Nigerian Professor Emeritus, who is also the Chairman of JAMB Equal Opportunity Group (JEOG), Professor Okebukola who a former Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission (NUC), said, in the process of selecting the most qualified person for this international honour, at UNESCO, Oloyede towered far above his fellow contestants from Africa.
HIS INTELLECTUAL PROWESS
From his early age, Oloyede has consistently been a bookworm as there was no book within his reach that he would not want to read and digest. His excellent academic performance at the University of Ilorin, as well as his exceptional administrative acumen, when he became the Vice-Chancellor of the same University of Ilorin, could therefore, not have come as a surprise to those who knew him closely. But besides academic brilliance, what actually lifted him in life is his genuine goodwill and sincere selfless service which he is always eagerly ready to render towards helping others. His sacrifices in this sphere are quite legendary and his phenomenal rise can only be classified as a justified reward from the AlmightyAlla.
HIS TENURE AS VC
If, during his tenure as Vice-Chancellor, the University of Ilorin could rise so astronomically from a very modest foundation and tower so loftily above many other Universities that preceded it, in Nigeria, then, the hope that with people like him in sensitive positions, a new Nigeria can still emerge from the debris of the old, should not be lost.
THE WORTH OF INSTITUTIONS
Perhaps, no Nigerian, other than Professor Oladipo Olujimi Akinkugbe, the pioneer Vice Chancellor and Professor Emeritus in Medicine, at the Univrsity of Ilorin, had foreseen the above assertion long before Oloyede zoomed into the firmaments of the citadel of his Alma Mata. Below was what Professor Akinkugbe said in a speech he once delivered as the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin in the late 1970s:
“Institutions are worth no more than the men who work them”.
The speech quoted here is partially in tandem with a verse of the Qur’an that reads thus: “Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change the evil contents of their minds…” Q. 13:11
Who could ever think, even as recently as a decade ago, that the same JAMB which was a mere academic mess up and a laughing stock in Africa, could become what it is today? It was on the premise of Professor Akinkugbe’s pregnant statement, quoted above, that Professor Oloyede, a student and mentee of Professor Akinkugbe, built his unsurpassable achievements as the Vice-Chancellor of the same University of Ilorin, between 2007 and 2012, as a way of encouraging the Nigerian youths of today on pleasant possibilities of tomorrow.
For some of those youths, that tomorrow has earnestly begun with the same Professor Oloyede today, as their exemplary model. The great men briefly described by Professor Akinkugbe in his referred speech, are not by any means ordinary. And, the soil from which they sprang, are not by any standard restricted to any particular area of study or style of life. Thus, since the tree of life has many branches and roots, no topmost twig should presume to think that it alone has sprung from the mother earth. There is no restriction of the genuine signpost of life to any particular person, place or time.
THE PARABLE OF GREATNESS
In all its ramifications, greatness is like a magnet which attracts only the relevant metal elements to itself. It was because some people, including a British writer and poet, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who won Nobel Laurel in 1907 were unmindful of the above assetion that the world is in turmoil today. In the conclusion of one of his poems, Rudyard Kipling once asserted thus: ”Oh! East is East and West is West; never the Twain shall meet…”
That poem later came to intensify the perennial hostility between the East and the West, which the latter came to adopt as a permanent policy to the detriment of global peace and harmony. But what neither Kipling nor the West, for which he coined his infamous poem, did not understand about the natural divide, in the contemporary world, is the existence of an abstract confluence similar to a knuckle that holds the blades of a pair of scissors together.
Just as the scissors cannot operate effectively with one blade, so can no man with one focused educational eye, correctly claim to be the main signpost in any field of human endeavour. That is what distinguishes Prof Oloyede from many others of his peers. Unknown to many, this man combines the Eastern and the Western education together with the intention of jointly utilizing both, maximally, to the benefit of mankind. And, that is now manifesting vividly, not only in Nigeria, but in the entire continent of Africa.
AS JAMB REGISTRAR
Prof Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede is a household name in the academia, throughout the entire world, today, just like the University he was privileged to head for five years in Ilorin over a decade ago. What qualified him for such a vertical position is an interesting question for which some inquisitive minds may earnestly want to seek an answer. And, the answer to that question is not far-fetched.
BINOCULAR VIEW
Like some rare men of letters, in the primordial time, when education was clearly distinct from mere literacy, Professor Oloyede wears an intellectual binocular with which he sees life from a bird’s eye view. And, this is evident, not just in his management of the University of Ilorin, for five years, but also in the humility, selflessness and patriotism with which he demonstrates civility in all its ramifications. The difference between a man of letters and a man of knowledge is quite clear. While the one sees life through the common eye, the other sees it through an uncommon but natural binocular.
In the days of Socrates, Aristotle and Herodotus, when education was an adorned virtue used as a yardstick for measuring civility and value, no one cared about the material gains accruing from it. Bastardization of education only began when certificate was introduced as a means of evaluating its material worth. Thus, with certificate, mere literacy began to be misconceived as education. Whereas, literacy is just an added value to education, the modern day man has ignorantly but arrogantly interpolated the one for the other. This is what Prof Oloyede resented at the early stage of his academic odyssey when he chose to combine Eastern education with that of the West and backed up both with rare determination to take advantage of their combination, as a fertilizer for the academic soil of Nigeria’s future which was why he specialized in Arabic and Islamic Studies even at the professorial level.
Many ignorant Nigerians, including some uninformed journalists, had queried Oloyede’s educational background, even as Vice-Chancellor, in their vainglorious belief that Arabic and Islamic studies had nothing valuable to offer a progressive nation. Apparently, such blind skeptics did not know that some other Nigerian celebrities like the renowned literary man, Professor Kole Omotosho, the author of ‘Just Before Dawn’ and the current Alake of Egbaland Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo, as well as Prof Isaac Ogunbiyi who retired as a Professor in the Lagos State University (LASU), and, even the former First Lady of Ondo State, Mrs. Funke Agagu, obtained their first University degrees in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Ibadan, proudly called the Premier University.
Yet, all of them, and several others, not mentioned here, are Christians by faith. Looking at these mentioned personalities and many others, like them, no sensible person can show how their educational backgrounds diminished their greatness in life.
Arabic which is naturally spoken by more than 500 million people, in the world, today, is one of the few languages used to conduct meetings and conferences at the United Nations. It is only in a country like Nigeria, where ignorance is a garland of pride that such naivety, with which to denigrate a person for making a choice of career, can thrive vaingloriously.
HIS PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
Professor Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede’s philosophy of life seems to tally with that of Daniel Webster, an American intellectual and Statesman, who, in a memorable poem stated as follows:
“If we work marble it will perish; if we work upon brass time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instill in them, just principles; we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time can efface but will brighten to all eternity”. This is the philosophy that propelled Oloyede to adopt contentment as his personal principle, right from his early age.
EVIDENCE OF PATRIOTISM
As the President of African Vice-Chancellors, when he was still the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, he noticed that the position of the Executive Secretary of the Association of African Universities (AAU) was more important and more beneficial to Nigeria than that of the President which he occupied, Prof Oloyede, therefore, encouraged some of his Nigerian colleagues to apply for that post, promising that he would resign his Presidential position in that Association to enable a Nigerian to emerge as Executive Secretary. But typical of Nigerians, most of his colleagues did not believe him. However, when the time came and one of them reluctantly applied, Oloyede surprisingly resigned from his Presidential post, just after two years in an office where he was supposed to spend four renewable years. Following that patriotic display of strategy, Nigeria began to benefit greatly from the post of Executive Secretary which was then held by Prof Jegede, a former Vice- Chancellor of National Open University (NOUN). And, to show appreciation to Prof Oloyede over his large heart and patriotism, the AAU Board appointed him as a Board Member of that Association. Only a few Nigerians in the academic field can surpass this humble man’s record when it comes to the ‘nitty gritty’ of academic prowess, discipline and integrity. Yet, you can hardly notice it in his demeanour.
FIRST AMONG EQUALS
Professor Oloyede was not only the first ‘FIRST CLASS’ graduate of the Faculty of Arts in the University of Ilorin and the very first alumnus of that University to obtain a PhD in that same University, he was also the first Director of Academic Planning and first alumni President to be a member of the Governing Council of the University. Oloyede is the first Unilorin alumnus to become a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and subsequently the first alumnus to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University.
Not only that, he is the first Vice-Chancellor in Nigeria to introduce Computer-Based Test (CBT) as a means of screening applicants for admission into the University, an invention which institutions like WAEC and NECO later adopted. This ingenuous personality was also the first Vice-Chancellor to lead a second generation University to the number one position in Nigeria, based on external ranking.
UNINTERRUPTED SESSIONS
He was also the first Nigerian Vice-Chancellor to combine the Board membership of International Association of Universities (IAU) with those of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and Association of African Universities (AAU).
With the above listed ‘FIRSTS’ he was able to make Unilorin the first Federal University in Nigeria to run an uninterrupted academic calendar throughout his tenure and this made it possible for Unilorin to become internationally ranked as one of the very best 20 Universities in Africa, during his time as Vice Chancellor. Also, through Prof Oloyede’s astute academic administration, the University of Ilorin was able to maintain the first position among Nigerian Universities for three consecutive years (2009, 2010 and 2011).
I BELIEVE
While giving his first annual report entitled ‘I BELIEVE’, barely one year after he became the Vice-Chancellor, he reflected on that determination thus:
“History tells us that Julius Caesar, with his legions, sailed over the channels from Gaol and arrived in today’s England. He did a very clever, yet, incongruous thing to ensure the success of his army. Halting the soldiers on the chalk cliffs of Dover, he burnt every ship by which they had crossed, leaving them with nothing but determination to succeed or perish, with the only means of retreat consumed by the red tongues of fire. It was that determination, powered by courage that made the legions to advance and conquer Europe. They did not look back and the rest is history”.
“I believe”, he continued: “that with the caesarean determination of avoiding destruction and being focused on the set goals, the University of Ilorin, by all standards, a great University can be greater. Our goals are to fulfill our mission, attain our vision and engrave the name of our University on the psyche of global reckoning through the adoption of best practices. I believe that this is possible along the dictum that says “whatever human mind can conceive and believe in, man can achieve”. “I believe that we can do it if we are determined”.
It is that courageous belief that is now seeing him through the hitherto turbulent voyage of JAMB in Nigeria today.
“Who shares his life’s pure pleasure and walks the honest road; who trades with heaping measure and lifts his brother’s load; who turns the wrong down bluntly and lends the right a hand; he dwells in God’s own country and tills the holy land”.
CONCLUSION
If Professor Oloyede’s citation were to be re-written by yours sincerely, it will not be different from what you have read here. We pray the Almighty Allah to spare the life of this man as well as the lives of other forward-looking Nigerians who see value in his life and are ready to emulate him for Nigeria’s prosperity. AMEN!