by Sunday Sammu
Reading biographies and autobiographies of great achievers is one of the ways of receiving inspiration towards aspiration for greater heights. Achievers are people who are dedicated to their dreams.
They have an enabling attitude, a conviction that they themselves are laboratory of innovation. Their ability to change themselves is central to their success. They are dreamers. They are hard workers. They have possibility mentality. They often possess some modicum of madness in their journey towards success.
To paraphrase Chief Obafemi Awolowo, achievers are not the only ones born with wisdom, but while their mates are running around with women of easy virtues, drinking wines and smoking all manner of marijuana, watching films, pursuing vanities, they are at their tables, studying, reading because they know that readers are leaders. And, as the American writer, Groucho Marx says, “every time somebody turns on the television, the achievers go into the other room and read a book”
Narrowing down the whole narrative to the current University of Ibadan Vice Chancellor, Prof. Abel Idowu Olayinka, it may interest today’s youth that this great achiever was born in a village called Odo Ijesa in Osun state on February 16, 1958. (I hope he won’t punish me for telling the world that he came from the village like me!). He didn’t have any aristocratic background. He never attended a Private Nursery and Primary School. The young Idowu attended public primary school called St. Bartholomew’s Primary School. He also attended public secondary school, the famous Ilesa Grammar School.
But that is not the real issue. The kernel of the story is that; right from the tender age, the young Idowu has been an irredeemable bibliomaniac, omnivorously chewing anything that comes his ways even up till now! He reads a lot. He has perfectly justified the saying that readers are leaders. Any wonder he was appointed a leader of a University of Ibadan status which parades the highest number of professors in Nigeria. The UI has well over 400 professors, thus, serving as the intellectual capital of the country.
This consistent reading habit which catapulted a village boy of yesterday to speak at a world stage called Chatham House in America recently is the first lesson today’s youth need to glean from the life of our role model. Nobody in the village at that time would have thought the young Idowu of Odo Ijesa would become a cynosure of all eyes at Chatham House, where leaders of the world speak as he recently dazzled his audience. But reading made it happen for our erudite scholar.
As I said in the past, with his current position as the 12th VC of the University of Ibadan, Prof. Olayinka has achieved historical immortality which money can’t buy. He has forever written the name of his family in gold, for, references shall continually be made to him, even years after he must have become an ancestor. Having been working with him over the years, it never ceases to amaze me how an individual could be so focused, consistent and irrevocably committed to the lane of learning that he will resume work around 7 am and will not close until 10.30 pm. I often stylishly run to my house, leaving him behind in the office! Recently, he presided over the interview for the Deputy Registrar positions. The interview which began around 8 am did not end until around 8 in the night. The following day, Prof. Olayinka had got to the office around 7.30 am, hosting Chief Subomi Balogun who came on courtesy visit. I don’t know where he derives his energies from! It’s amazing really.
Another lesson in the life of Prof. Olayinka is that he is a workaholic. He is too committed to his work. He focuses almost mono-maniacally on his job to the exclusion of clubbing, which is the pastime of today’s youth. He keeps thinking and working towards making the campus a place of scientific information, reformation, innovation and transformation.
One of his former students, Mr. Nnabuife Humphrey Nwabuzo who is now with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) attests to the fact that Prof. Olayinka has ever been a hardworking individual, attending to his work with all sense of commitment and dedication. According to Mr. Nwabuzo, “when we were in UI, he was one of the lecturers who would never miss his class. He would come on time and teach you until you understand the issues. He is a wonderful lecturer. He is approachable “
Shorn of all material opulence, Prof. Olayinka is a cultivator of acquaintanceship and companionship. You see him on social media exchanging pleasantries with the high and low social classes without discrimination. He respects people. He finds it difficult to embarrass people by dressing them down.
I have never seen him shouting people down, rather, he may tactically avoid you by concentrating on his phone. In my future book with a possible title “Working With the Vice Chancellors “, I will certainly have a lot to say about him. Till then, the show continues.
Sunday Sammu is the media assistant to the VC at University of Ibadan
