Tag: lecture

Professor Kayode Osuntokun, one of Africa’s foremost neuroscientists passed on more than 22 years ago when the ovation of his remarkable life was loudest. He was only 60 years old. He was born on January 6, 1935. January 6 is the feast of Epiphany so the lecture today is holding close to his birthday. His death was a great loss to his wife and children and to us his siblings, and medical academy in Nigeria, Africa and the world. If he had lived longer, he could have been a candidate for the Nobel laureate in medical sciences. His life was a proof of the statement of the poet William Wordsworth that the “child is the father of the man” or what the poet John Milton meant when he said “childhood shows the man as morning shows the day”. He was a precocious child who by the time he was six years old had read the Bible from page to page. He was barely 17 when he left high school and this was a record time in those days when people went to school when they were really mature. His power of recall of events was prodigious. He was so totally organized that he kept documents and letters as if he was an archivist. I do not need to regale my readers about his prizes and awards all over the world and as being the first black person to achieve the various feats he attained in the field of medicine. He was recognized worldwide and an appreciative home land conferred on him the Officer of Federal Republic (OFR) and the Nigerian National Order Of merit (NNOM). He spent virtually his adult life at the University of Ibadan and at its University College Hospital (UCH) where he rose to the rank of Professor of Medicine in the subspecialty of Neurology at a young age and subsequently became the Dean, College of Medicine and later Chief Medical  Director. Two of his children and a granddaughter have followed his footsteps into the medical profession while three of his other children have wisely followed the much more lucrative fields of law and finance! The college of medicine has honoured him by naming one of the auditoriums  in the college “The Kayode Osuntokun Auditorium” where the annual lecture organized by the Kayode Osuntokun Trust chaired by his equally academically distinguished wife, companion and partner, retired professor  of ophthalmology, Professor Olabopo Osuntokun. Professor Kayode Osuntokun was not just a bookworm, he was also a sportsman who played soccer both in high school and at the University College. At one time he was the lawn tennis champion of the then Western Nigeria. Even though he was at heart shy and introverted, he nevertheless had a wide circle of friends with whom he was very close. He definitely left his footprints on the sand of time. He is certainly unforgettable. The World Health Organisation organized annual lectures in his remembrance but after a few of such lectures, the enthusiasm seems to have waned but the fire in Ibadan keeps on burning.

There have been 19 annual lectures and symposium since 1996 when the lectures began. The lecture did not hold last year because the linchpin of these lectures, Professor Olabopo Osuntokun was under the weather and the Trust did not want to hold the parade, so to say, without the celebrant. Thank God for this year’s lecture. The lecturer this year is the globally distinguished virologist and former vice chancellor of the Redeemer’s University, Professor Oyewale Tomori. He was president, Nigerian Academy of Sciences and Fellow of American Academy of Medical Sciences. He has spent all his life in the frontier of discovering and finding solutions to the myriad of dangerous viruses that litter the African environment. Professor Tomori will be following the footsteps of other medically known and distinguished academics from Nigeria, the USA and the United Kingdom one of who was Sir Keith Peters,  Regius Professor of Physic (Medicine) in Cambridge who wrote when Kayode died “That as a young doctor, Kayode came to learn from us  in the United Kingdom, but by the time he died we were all learning from him”. What better accolade could one have expected from his colleagues? The lectures have not been limited to the Akinkugbes, Aminus,  Salakos , Esans , Adeloyes, Akpans, Kukus,   Oyebodes, Awojobis, Falusi-Ololade s and  other distinguished medical luminaries alone. Professor Akin Mabogunje brought his erudition to give a most insightful lecture on the dire social condition of Nigeria within which medical scientists operate. The lectures have been chaired by distinguished Nigerians  such as Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and a distinguished international civil servant, the late Professor Tekena Tamuno, former vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan , Chief Folake Solanke  SAN,  Professor Bolanle Awe, Professor Olumide Lucas among others. The late Deacon Gamaliel Onosode also came a few years ago and contributed substantial amount of his hard-earned money to  assist the Kayode Osuntokun Trust in its support for research, and award of prizes to  the best student in Christ School  Ado Ekiti  in the WAEC examination and in the  best student in the  final  Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery examinations of the University of Ibadan. In his will and last testament, Kayode Osuntokun virtually gave all his hard-earned savings  from years of consultations at the WHO, guest lectures all over the world and earnings during sabbatical leaves in British and American universities and at the National Institute of Health ( NIH ) in the USA running to millions of naira in 1995. The prizes at Christ School and in the medical school are being doubled this year because of the declining value of the naira. The funds directly given to the University of Ibadan have been so totally mismanaged that the least said about it the better. At a time the money could not be traced in the university bursary. The traumatic effect on Professor Olabopo Osuntokun can only be imagined. The effect on me in particular was such that when I endowed prizes in Ekiti State and Redeemer’s universities, it was with trepidation and an academic colleague actually said I was wasting my resources. I hope this scenario is not a general phenomenon in Nigerian universities because if it is, it will discourage academics and others from bequeathing money to our universities. In civilized countries of the world, universities are run largely from such funds. My PhD was sponsored by the Izaak Walton Killam Trust /Foundation which were funds provided by Dorothy Killam to celebrate her most distinguished industrialist-husband by funding research in the universities of Alberta, Dalhousie and British Columbia. What has happened to the funds provided by the Kayode Osuntokun Trust in the University of Ibadan is most annoying and painful because the institution has betrayed the late Osuntokun’s hopes in the university. I know a few people who said in1995 when we read my brothers will that he should just have given his entire estate to his wife and children. When Professor Jide Bademosi, a distinguished neurologist was reluctantly appointed Kayode Osuntokun Professor of Neurology, he was for months never paid because the funds from the Trust had been muddled up. This is bad for a university of the age of the University of Ibadan of which as an alumnus I am proud. Perhaps all is not lost and the situation may yet be redeemable. But what happened in the University of Ibadan is a symptom of the general malaise not just in the Nigerian university system but in Nigerian life in general.

Welcome to the Kayode Osuntokun lecture. One hopes that Nigeria of our dreams will one day be a reality. It is in this spirit that Professor Tomori’s lecture will be relevant. The chairman of the occasion is Professor George Fola Esan, distinguished haematologist and Christ School alumnus and one of the brightest persons I have ever known apart from Kayode Osuntokun and Tosin Lyon, MD a non-invasive cardiologist in Toronto who happens to be my daughter. It seems brilliance is in the Osuntokun gene!

Finally, let me use this medium to remember two of my classmates and friends Dr. Omololu Odukunle and Otunba Noah Olutola Fadayomi, two distinguished Nigerians who joined the saints triumphant at the close of last year. May God rest Noah and Lolu’s souls in perfect peace.