PROF. NELSON OLABANJI FASINA of the Department of English, University of Ibadan, UI, clocks 60 today. In an exclusive interview with GBENRO ADESINA, he shed light on his journey so far. Excerpt:
Q: How do you feel today?
A: Very well. Today, Saturday June 20, year 2020 is my 60th birth anniversary. I feel so happy and grateful to God for making me to clock 60 years on earth, and I prayer for a much longer life for me to accomplish my God sent task, and to fulfill my divine destiny! When I look back, I have every reason to give glory to God, because I have passed through the thick and thin, from my childhood to the period of midlife. For, I reason that if the Psalmist revealed that we’re to live up to 120 years, then, invariably, 60 years on earth is midlife! Seventy years is a period of immediate past midlife. I’m sixty today. So, I’m in my midlife. So, I have every cause to glorify the Lord, that today, if I have no mansion, at least, I can say that God has given me mansions of spiritual self-realisation, social justification of my existence in that my biological children and also spiritual children, wife, brothers, sisters, and relations, and mother are alive; and at the same time, I’m satiated by some academic knowledge. I can say that I give glory to God that I feel so fulfilled in those parameters.
Q: Talking about thick and thin, can you mention very briefly the challenges that you have passed through in life?
A: Like every other African child exposed to this unfortunate climate of grappling with economic survival, as a child, I lost my father when I was 13 plus, specifically January 14, 1974. There was no hope that I would ever make it in life. No hope that I would have university education. But, today, Divine Grace has spoken, destiny has for me! I am a professor in the University of Ibadan (UI). I have every cause to glorify God. Not only that, I have overcome what I can describe as clogs of spiritual debarment, in terms of really coming to terms with the reality of God. So, I can say I can humbly say I have come full stature in terms of spiritual attainment. I understand who God is. I know what type of Christianity I should practice. I know I don’t have to pretend. I serve my God whether anybody is there or not. I have good relationship with God. And God has given me an expanded and expansive knowledge about this universe, especially, as it pertains to my quest to understand the flora and fauna of this universe. I feel so fulfilled in terms of the gradual ease of immediate family challenges, especially in marriage. I thank God that I am settled and comfortable. I have my children now under my control. They are all doing well!
Q: What do you mean by saying that you have all your under your control?
A: The reason is that I had love disaffection and eventual broken marriage, which led to separation of father and children, but then, as the children were getting more mature, we have had to negotiate proper father-son relationship amidst the love lost! No condition, no crisis of life forces is permanent. Every problem has expiry date like drugs!
Q: What do you think is the mistake that you made in your marriage that may have contributed to the crisis you have experienced in it?
A: I think that the mistake I made was, one, being inexperienced and being too spiritual. Secondly, it also derived from the first point I just mentioned. That is, being subjective to the dictates of pastors and advisors, who probably didn’t have experience of life to have given the right counsel at that time of trouble in my marital life. I must also say, that I was not totally equipped early enough in my early adulthood, as a married person, to understand the intricacies of marriage. For instance, because my father died when I was still very young, I had no experience of living with a father and mother together as to receive that kind of training. But then, I had moral training from childhood, discipline, restraints, common sense and indigenous knowledge. Those were the parameters that also assisted me to get out of whatever trouble I found myself in marriage or in other adventures into the delicate zones of life. Most of the time, I am also very objective and sincere about myself. When I am wrong, I seek for forgiveness. As a matter of fact, I could go as far as trying to forgo everything in order to reconcile with a woman with whom I have love lost. Most of the time, I try to prioritise the essence of integrity, God and spirituality. So, in a way, I can say that the mistakes came naturally and they were unavoidable. For example, if I was an ambitious person in terms of desire to acquire the highest peak of education, and if I got married to somebody who was lackadaisical about education and self development, definitely, we will be at cross-roads of life vision and mission. And there will be problem. But those crises too were also part of the process of making one to become more experienced and mature as to face further challenges of leadership in life. I can tell you that most of the time, when I assess myself, I am a good leader. Take it!
Q: How many children do you have?
A: I have six children. Five male, one female. My first son, Philip Toluwanimi Fashina, born on December 26, 1990, is waxing strong in the music industry, with some education, though, he is yet to attain my desired zenith of education for him. He’s focused. He will be 30 in December, 2020. He is living on his own, making some money and riding on. My second child, Benedict Iyanuoluwa, was born in November 1995. In fact, he’s our miracle child! His birth was beleaguered by fire and force to tell humans that God is greater than man. He is in his final year at the University of Ilorin where he is studying English. Third born is David Toluwaleke Fashina, born June 21, 2002. He is in first year at the University of Michigan, United States of America (USA), studying Biochemistry. The fourth is a girl, Deborah Fadekemi Fashina. Born June 18, she’s eleven years and she’s is in JSS.3. She hopes to study law, but I am trying to see if I could convince her to study Botany, so that she could take advantage of my quantum research knowledge of herbal medicine. My fifth born is Jeremiah Damilare. He is on his way to junior secondary school. The last born is Ore-Ofe Solomon Ayobami Ayodele.
Q: So, we are still expecting Ebenezer?
A: No. I believe that at the age of 60, one should begin to consolidate building up the empire of nuclear family relationship, so that the children can make it in life and contribute positively to their own world. I should be able to live well enough to mentor them to attain that stature by God’s grace. So, I don’t think I need to produce another child after the age of 60.
Q: Are they from the same mother?
A: Not so. I told you I had a broken marriage. But then, I must tell you that even that is making me a reluctant polygamist. But I have no choice.
Q: How many women are in your life?
A: I want to reserve that to myself.
Q: Do you have any problem with polygamy?
A: No and and yes! Yes, because monogamy is not even part of our natural tradition, custom and culture in Africa. It was imposed by western metropolitan culture and religion. Even in the Bible, polygamy was never condemned, but people tend to cite isolated portions of the Bible to support their own personal conviction that we should base marriage on monogamy. On the other hand, I’ll say No to polygamy because it may not pay off. It may lead to frequent co-wife jealousy, rivalry and lack of peace for the man. But, it can honestly prolong the life of a man, because there’ll be no need by the mono-wife to kill him early so she could have his property exclusively to herself and children. Most of the time, nowadays, you find people who preach against polygamy also supporting and practising serial divorces and marriage, or they hypocritically condemn polygamy. They maintain only one official wife, but they keep scores of female concubines! So that makes it contradictory.
Q: So, you can still marry?
A: Well, if that essential thing I think is lacking at the moment is fulfilled, I will not take another wife. At 60, I desire peace of the mind!
Q: Are you talking about the first wife?
A: Huh, no comments! Though it’s a delicate bridge to cross-over!
Q: Are you trying to do that now?
A: What I am saying is that, rather than go to add another woman, if I find my former rehabilitated socially and mentally enough to help in putting the family together, definitely. Hmmmmnn, a radical decision to take! But then, I must tell you she’s most radical …
Q: But you are also radical?
A: O yes! My radicalism is not radicalism of matrimony. My radicalism is anchored on ideology humanism. It’s based on intellectualism and decolonisation of human mind; mentally, spiritually, socially, politically and culturally. I don’t know how to beat children. I am so meek in the house that I’m even a good cook. I cook for my wife. I don’t feel degraded or dishonoured for doing that. I would cook for her and say come and taste it. I cook better. We would joke and exchange banters and all that. I’m such a person. I am a weakling when it comes to the home.
Q: May be she is not a ‘yes sir’ person?
A: The point is that by reason of my upbringing, I can’t dissociate myself from the extended family, but she didn’t want that. She wanted me and my husband kind of marital life; and that can’t be possible for me. If I were nurtured in that type of home or family culture, maybe I wouldn’t be a professor today because nobody would have been responsible for my education in the extended family!
Q: Is that the major problem between the two of you?
A: It is one of the problems. It is really critical in the sense that she didn’t want her own mother to come to her house. This is a woman that gave her birth, made her life before I met her and married her. If she recoils from her mother successfully, that wouldn’t be acceptable with my own mother! On Aburi I still stand! I will not take that. I like people around me. I want her people to be around. I want my people to be around! She wants an isolated, moody and secretive life. Though, on liberal grounds, that’s an option. And there be men who fit well into that socio-psychic life structure. I’m not. I’m very gregarious by nature.
Q: So, what is your advice for those just coming up?
A: Young adults who plan to marry? Well, a warrior who has faced fierce war would be a better counsellor in war strategies than someone who watches war movies from the home theatre! As a result, I think, I can validly give an advice or counsel to people that are young, upcoming and of marriage age that they should excuse sentiment. They should excuse over spirituality, and perhaps, beauty. They should investigate the background of the person. Look critically into the family background of your target wife or husband before you fall into it because there is no way that the connecting rod, which are the chains of history, an accident in the spouse’s family background, will not rob off on your marriage. Eventually, compatibility matters, despite the premium religiosity of “God’s Will”. Also, we should not over react. There was this lady I would have married, Kikelomo! Everybody knew we were to get married. We were together in our undergraduate days. We were both brilliant and ambitious! I was already known to her family. But something happened on the basis of principle that made me to say, well, I don’t think I wanted to go further because I just thought that we needed not to pretend as Christians. I like to eclipse or rather ellipse the rest of what happened. Based on that, I painfully decided to turn off. Though, we both had the imagination that each of us could not marry another person, yet the moment I changed my mind, I decided to stand by it. It was when I wanted to marry another person that she came back, attempting to assert her rights of passion to have me back. But, I looked away from her. It wasn’t that easy though. It was like Abraham trying to sacrifice his only son Isaac at Mt. Moriah! But it affected me because everything I needed in a woman was packaged in her aura!
Q: What would you have done different?
A: It is difficult for me to identify that because, at every junction of history, one can make mistakes, adjust and then go up to success. Maybe, I should have forgiven Kikelomo and endured the shock I got from that short episode and narrative. After all, it wasn’t that she cheated on me. I was then so over spiritual and possibly too sanctimonious!
Q: Retrospectively, what are the things that made you happy?
A: Wow! That was my moment of bright light after darkness! In 1991, I had heavy strain and sprain of remorse and psychological trauma over the uncanny attitude of my first wife. She went to my Vice-Chancellor then, at Ondo State University (now Ekiti State University), where I lectured for 10 years before my appointment in UI 22 years ago. She reported that I said this and that about him. She thought that I would be sacked. My Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor, late Professor Olu Agbi, summoned me. They said, Nelson Fashina, this was what happened but you are too young to face this kind of challenge. Agbi said, I never taught you but you have been my colleague and if I assess you against some colleagues, you’re a star. So you have a future. You’re too young for to face this challenge. Don’t be kill yourself. Forge on with your academic career. At that time, I was into my PhD programme on University scholarship! It was as if I should shoot it down, call it quit, resign from the university and move on to do other things. I was very frustrated! What I thought they would do, they did differently. Instead of indicting me, they commended me and said even if you did, though, we know you didn’t do that, even if you did, was it appropriate for your wife to have come to tell us? That made me very happy. As a matter of fact, a few weeks after that time, I got an Exchange Scholarship to England. And that settled everything. That tranquilized my mind. That gave me joy and that was my first travel out of the country.
Q: What was your happiest moment?
A: You may be surprised that my happiest moment wasn’t the time my professorship was pronounced. The thing with UI is that your promotion may be delayed, but never denied, you have the required merits. It will later be announced and backdated. When my professorship was announced, it didn’t mean too much to me, because I knew that I was already operating even as a professorial material, even as Senior Lecturer. I knew by all standards, I was fully matured to be a professor in any bench mark university in this world at the time UI announced. So, it didn’t mean anything to me. But I was so happy in year 2000, when I got the Fulbright Scholarship. It was another relieving moment because already, at that time, I encountered a kind of tough time. I was a Senior Lecturer with shocking experience of threat from an adversarial senior colleague, who was trying to act on the impulse of advice by another colleague from Ado Ekiti to undermine my academic progress. But, I was so happy when the same adversary facilitated my nomination, and asked me to apply for Fulbright where there were applicants from about 776 universities and only 18 would be picked – 3 from each of the six continents, in my field. I eventually made the list of three from African continent. I was the only one from West Africa. The peak of it was when I was declared the valedictorian, at the Institute of Postmodern American Studies, University of Louisville, KY, USA. I was adjudged one of the best of the Junior Fulbright scholars at that time.
Q: How many PhD candidates have you supervised so far?
A: I have supervised 14. Two of them are professors. One of them is the newly appointed Director of Distance Learning, University of Ibadan, Professor Babatunde Omobowale, whom I supervised in 2002. The others include is Mark Ighile, currently lecturing at Igbinedon University, Dr. Akin Olaniyi (of blessed memory) whose sudden death at a flowering moment of his international recognition as a scholar was a blow to my heart. Others are Dr. Paul Onomuakpokpo, Dr. Mrs. H. Olanrewaju, Dr. Ayodeji Shittu, Dr. Femi Adebayo, Dr. Rachael Aluko, Dr. Bamidee Oso, Dr. Azeez Sesan, Dr. Ufuoma Davies, Dr. Owolabi and other two who are ready for their PhD viva-voce! I am happy to recall that I never had problem with any of my supervisees. Initially, students would be afraid, whenever they are assigned to be supervised by Professor Fashina. But, thereafter, going into the programme, they would discover that whatever myth about the fiery intellectual power-grid of fear and awe about the academic rigour of Fashina was more of a myth than a reality. I would put them through. At the end of the day, the theoretical precinct that I want to resonate in their thesis would be there, because of my strategy of supervision. Currently, I have seven PhD supervisees!
Q: How do you feel when you are mentoring these students?
A: I feel in best and happiest moments, because I see my intellectual anointing being poured into them. If you want me to count my blessings in academics, at least, I can tell you that I have lectured in the University for at least 33 years. When I look back, I am always happy when I have feedback from, not only for my supervisees and students that I taught! They still connect to me. Many of them write me very encouraging messages. In their messages, they would say, sir, we still remember your abrasive theoretical, analytical depths and elevated vocabularies that almost would break the lecture room walls! We are proud of you and we want to be like you. Almost all the students I supervise want to be like me. That makes me to actually thank God that I passed through this particular passage, this intellectual kingdom called University scholarship!
Q: You have just 10 years to retire from active university lecturing. Will there be a difference in the way you do your job and relate with your students?
A: Let me tell you, nothing will change in the sense that I have always maintained good relationship with my students. Let me tell you a story. When I was a younger lecturer, maybe, an Assistant Lecturer, I was very tough, even though the students were also very much blessed to have been trained by us, under our dictum, maximum knowledge. They would openly commend me, saying: Fashina would come to class and teach for three hours and he wouldn’t hold a sheet of paper, everything comes from his head, he’ll be citing multiple scholarly references off hand. That has been the story. Sometimes, some weak students feel the burden of that weight, that height of intellectualism; they feel jittery. As I grew older, entering into the age of 45-50, I started adjusting to a simpler and relaxed policies of lecturer/student discipline. I opened up a new leaf-sheet of disposition to my students. We would eat together. We would sometime go outing together and share many things together. At times, I organise extra lectures under the tree at the U.I Botanical Gardens and would bring bush meat and all that. We enjoy ourselves. That has been the good relationship between me and my students. I can remember an episode: a rascally male student in 300 level arrived in my class very late; but he had the audacity to raise up his hand, three minutes after he came in, to ask question. I refused him that privilege. The student still stood up to ask the question and I said no, you can’t ask me question. He was rude. I said, I would go out of the classroom if he wasn’t cautioned. Eventually, I went out of the class and they all ran after me, came to my office, and were begging me. I saw this guy who became in rude and audacious vertical position now came into my office in trepidation, falling in lateral position. I asked, “why are you prostrating?” He replied: “I am sorry sir”. I encouraged him to stand up. I asked the students to come around and I addressed them. Then, I queried: “why are you gentle man coming to beg me if you thought that what you did was right? Why don’t you stand by it? Don’t come and beg me because you think I have any power to harm or punish you or to do anything. The point is this, I know that nemesis will catch up with you if what you did to me was wrong, if I ever did that to any of my lecturers. The semester rolled by, and there was examination. At resumption, the student came, and said he scored the highest grade in my course. I told him, I didn’t know. The student came to me and said that he wanted to thank me. “”For what? Why are you thanking me, I queried! When he told me his grades in other courses. I asked of his matric. number. I pulled out my drawer and I checked and found out that the student had the highest score in the course. I dashed out to the HOD’s Office to check for his scores in other courses taught by other lecturers. It was the same story. As far as I am concerned, I told him, I didn’t know you scored the highest and I wouldn’t know because I don’t witch-hunt students or anybody. Whatever you scored is your own intellectual mark, not moral mark. It will still tell on you if you don’t change. The student became very happy but remorseful. Two years later, this student graduated. He went for youth corps and during the period, he came to school and popped into my office and presented me a bottle of wine. I said why now, he said sir, you are good. I have been talking about you. Lecturers like you are very rare. You don’t victimise students. I said you have now been morally trained. Now go and do likewise to other people. That is it.
Another experience I want to share with you is my experience with the female students. When I was a very young lecturer, because of the way I used to speak in class, my grammar and everything, some of the female students would come around. But I maintained some kind of integrity. Though, I needed to marry, I felt it was morally wrong to think of marry any of my female students. I thought it was some kind of harassment for me. But I didn’t know that some of them were so much in love with me until after 20 years. One of them after her graduation relocated to the USA and she became very rich. One day, somebody gave me her phone number. We spoke on phone and she said she had a broken marriage and that as a matter of fact, when she was my student, all of her mates thought that I would marry her but I was too conservative and all that. She said that at that time, I was too harsh on her. If she didn’t submit her assignment, I would not forgive her. I would throw off her script and things like that. I knew she was beautiful but I discounted her as a no go area! So, I blocked anything like that. She said her mates told her that maybe this man likes you or wants to marry you. At that time, I wasn’t married. She said she would usually reply that, “who will not like to marry Nelson Fasina? If Nelson Fasina should tell me that he wants to marry me, I wouldn’t waste time in accepting his proposal because I love him. But he never made any gestures at me! His face is always looking tough and stony! She revealed all these to me on international phone conversation more than 30 years after. As a young lecturer, I was governed by the traditional and conservative frame of mind that going out with my lady student could be an act of immorality, and it could boomerang. But later in life, I had reversed opinion, that I wasn’t totally correct, because I have seen many lecturers, who married their students and their marriage has worked perfectly. So, this question of sexual harassment needs to be actually redefined. Does it mean that a lecturer cannot marry his student? The answer is no. But, Godly justice awaits those who, unaccountably, give out marks to their favoured students.
Q: Some lecturers hold that their female students are part of the benefit of their profession?
A: I never saw it like that and I have never done such. I think such category of lecturers lack moral and Godly virtues! Indeed, it’s lack of integrity! When a living soul refuses to seek the higher magnitude of spiritual hierarchy, such a person will be operating base instincts of behaviour…
O: Somebody told me that lecturers in the university system are very notorious when it comes to lady students.
A: Not all lecturers, only an insignificant percentage. But I’ve heard reports of such disgraceful acts at different points of my rise from junior to senior position in academics. And it’s the same with other sectors of our national and global life! Such immoral acts are also found among government officials, politicians, banking executives, industrialists, medical directors and top security executives, Christian and Music clerics, etc. It’s an unfortunate decline in human integrity!
Q: But it is happening, even in the most ridiculous manner as a report by BBC recently confirms it. The truth is that no university, including the University of Ibadan is excluded.
A: Yes it is happening. Few percentages are doing it. People do it but not wickedly. They do it with tact and maturity and they succeed in it; and sometimes they get married to such female students and they do well in their marital life. But, when the relation suffers disaffection of disappointed expectations of the lady, the male lecturer becomes vulnerable, helpless and accountable …
Q: What is your advice to the younger scholars?
A: My advice to the younger scholars is that they should attempt to attain the highest point of intellectual development, irrespective of the distracting pressures of poverty and poor salaries earned by professors in Nigeria at the moment. However, the movement of the world economies and the challenges of family upkeep do not warrant exclusive reliance on economic sustenance from lecturers’ salaries. That has been the cause of many broken marriages. I should think that young and upcoming scholars should also explore the ways they can use their talents to make some money by the side so that they can augment family finances.
Q: What are the greatest influences in your life?
A: The greatest influence I have had is the influence of religion! My exposure to the good and the hypocritical aspect of it, altogether makes me to be more mature, and to decide on my own how I want the realisation of God in my life to be. For example, early in my Christian life, I had set aside our indigenous knowledge our culture and herbal medicine heritage. But later, as a result of travels and development in education and spiritual maturity, I have come to realise that it was counterproductive not to explore the advantages of herbal medicine. That is why I practice herbal medicine today. It has been an influencing pillar of some of my actions, that my work rests upon.
Q: What are the qualities that the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan must have?
A: Irrespective of the personality and the cleavages of ethnic and religious background, we would expect a Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan to pursue the exclusive U.I Projects without deference to influences from friends and what have you. What is paramount in University of Ibadan is that knowledge should be made a prominent promontory. Any U.I V-C should seek to propagate the nurturing of human minds and infrastructural development. What I am trying to say is that the Vice-Chancellor should, therefore, be sincerely humanistic in the sense that as we are in pursuit of intellectual development, we are also in pursuit of staff and students welfare. The well-being of staff and students should be prioritized to further put this university on the atlas of international recognition.
Q: How do you assess the public universities and the private ones? What do you think is the hope of the public university system in the face of a growing private university system in the nearest future?
A: It is saddening that trends in public universities in Nigeria reveals that they’re going extinct, or on the verge of being brain dead in their oversight functions! And this is due to paucity of Government funding. On the other hand, private universities are pro-capitalist inclined. As a result, the injection of late capitalism into the educational system in Nigeria, patterned towards the USA system, is gradually destroying the commitment of government to funding the public universities in Nigeria. If you know the Marxist Economic Theory, that the history of all hitherto existing society is history of class struggle, there is a kind of class question, in that the private universities are pro-capitalist, in that they are business oriented but much more efficient! Their proprietors are in close proximity to the means of production, political power, oil and gas power, industrial and religious dictatorship and all that.
On the contrary, public universities are servile appendages of their often changing and unstable government authorities, and the scenario is now worsened by the fiscal death-trap of FG’s IPPIS. They are far removed from the means of economic and hence academic control. The Vice-Chancellors and University Councils have lost their enabling statutory functions as the real hub of university administration and employers of labour! As such, they are like plebians. In such kind of economic structure, the public universities become the subjugated, the repressed, the suppressed and oppressed. And so you have a kind of paradigm of super ordinate and subordinate. So, the public universities are subordinate and they belong to the paradigm of the poor economic class and they’ll cave under the jackboots of Federal Ministry of education and the Ministry of Finance, Budget and Planning. I foresee that if this trend of multiple government masters for the public universities are not mitigated, one day, government would come and declare the privatisation of public universities. I think that will happen before I retire from the university. With the trend I am following, if they are true, I think that will happen one day. Government will come out with a glossy, juicy kind of pretentious arrangement that, well, secondary school education is free and let us have vocational training schools to train people in tailoring, hand weaving and making brooms and things like that. And that all we need is middle man power. The government will do this so as to reduce the burden of its financial responsibility to the Nigerian populace in terms of university education.
Q: Can we blame the students migrating to private universities as a result of the challenges confronting the public universities? Besides, do you agree to the school of thought that the certificate of private universities is inferior to the public universities?
A: You have asked a double barrel question. My response to the first one is that the migration from public universities to private universities is allowed. If you can afford it, good. Their parents work for their money. We would be pretending, and insincere if we say that the private universities are generally substandard in education. It is not true. We have got products of private universities in UI who did better than some of our own graduates in the Masters’ class. So, what are you talking about? They don’t experience any kind of industrial strikes, and they have good laboratories because they pay for it. I think what this country should come to terms with is to be realistic and to say well, let the public universities pay school fees so that we can have standard and quality education.
Q: What about the PhD programme of the private universities?
A: Let me tell you, to the level of undergraduate training, I give it to the private universities that they are relatively producing quality graduates. When it comes to postgraduate studies, you have to look at the postgraduate faculty. How many professors constitute their postgraduate faculties in those private universities’ postgraduate schools? We have to look at that. For now, there’s no way they can meet the standard of U.I in terms of postgraduate quality, for now. Even though they have standards and up to date equipment in their laboratories, they need quality and experienced professors.
Q: But, they’re making use of professors in public universities…
A: Yes, they do! But, that’s on adjunct basis. Let me tell you. We don’t have to rate the universities based on adjunct faculty. But all the same, I must say even in the USA, they make use of adjunct faculties but what I know is that the logic and depth of research in a place like U.I is of higher premium quality than that of any other university in this country. Don’t forget that U.I has become a postgraduate university. So, there is no way you can compare this university with private universities in terms of production of postgraduates.
Q: So, you will not respect a PhD graduate of private universities?
A: my scepticism is not a not a blanket cover for all! We need to know which scholar supervised the candidate’s thesis in that private postgraduate school, the lecturers and the external examiners, etc. All these will determine quality of the PhD work, apart from reading the thesis to determine its scholarly merits.
Q: Do you have any other thing you are doing apart from lecturing?
A: Oh, yes! I engage in public service and hobbies! I am a national officer of Vigilante Group of Nigeria, serving my country and community. Presently, as you are aware that the COVID-19 pandemic is ravaging the whole world, and Nigeria is not an exception, I’m part of the Homegrown Herbal Organic Team in search of a cure for Covid-19. In the last couple of months, the Oyo State Government set up a team in synergy with UI – the Homegrown Alternative Herbal Medicine Committee, to find a local cure to Coronavirus. Two committees were set up. The first is the Committee on Research and Development chairmaned by Professor of Medicine, Professor George Ademowo. Another committee to maintain balance between knowledge on herbal medicine in the university and from the general public, especially those traditional herbalists, is called the Harmonisation of Town and Gown Committee. I am the chairman to this committee. We are presently working to make a ground breaking proposal to the Oyo State Government to, first, identify sources of working indigenous cures for certain diseases and to also restructure Oyo State Trado-Medicine Board, which has been a problem of conflict from many administrations in the State. We are trying to see to the restructuring of it, renaming of it and chronicling of the past problems and how such problem can be avoided in the future for the purpose of making herbal medicine attain its right place in the health industry in Oyo State and Nigeria, so that we can have trado-medical hospital side by side with orthodox medicine hospital for people to make a choice on which way to go for treatment. Above all, I’m a notable prophet!
