I read with tremendous pleasure the news of the first graduation of medical doctors by Ekiti State university after struggling with the program for a decade . The college of Medicine was first conceived during the vice chancellorship of Professor Akin Oyebode In 1999 when Otunba Niyi Adebayo was the Governor Of Ekiti and therefore the visitor to the university .The plan then was to make the then university of Ado -Ekiti now Ekiti State university a comprehensive university with professional courses in Medicine , Law , Engineering and Business and financial studies. The problem was that establishing a medical school was like establishing a university in terns of financial outlay , staffing, laboratories at premedical and clinical levels and also building a reasonably well equipped and well funded teaching hospital . Unfortunately Ekiti had ambitions then but was short on funds . When the medical school was approved by the Senate of the university it only existed with only one staff, the provost and his official car and a small Bungalow on the grounds of the General Hospital.
When in 2003 Otunba Adeniyi Adebayo lost to Mr Ayo Fayose the so called medical school was one of the victims to the financial reality of the state . Governor Ayo Fayose set up a fact finding panel to look into the tertiary institutions in the state and in particular the embryonic medical school.The Governor graciously made me the chairman of the panel .The provost of the college professor Oyebola of the Physiology Department at the university of Ibadan and Professor Akin Oyebode the erstwhile vice chancellor were my school mates and juniors at Christ’s school so I knew they meant well for the institution . I remember telling the provost that he should not have accepted the job when he knew the university did not have the resources to mount a program in medicine .My panel submitted its report to governor Fayose giving him three options . 1 .That he had to find money to support the program of the medical school . Since we knew the State was impecunious ,we suggested syndicating a loan which would have run into billions over a five year period of planned development.
2.Make the students of the university medical school pay economic fees for their education and training . We knew the Governor would find this recommendation politically unpalatable especially when he had publicly and for political reasons slashed even the little tuition paid by the students in the university
- Cancel the college and ask the university to seek the help of neighboring medical schools to absorb the students .
The governor in his wisdom accepted the third option and as far as I was concerned he had no other option and I wrote in the papers to support him . For this I was abused and someone said my medical professor brother would turn in his grave to condemn me .
When in the whirligig of time Dr Kayode Fayemi became governor after Fayose and disputed governorship of Oni I was made the Pro chancellor and chairman of the new Ekiti State university which was the amalgamation of three universities of Education in Ikerre, Science and Technology In Ifaki and the old university of Ado -Ekiti.Working with the new vice vice chancellor professor Dipo Aina ,a first class scientist from Obafemi Awolowo university, Ile -Ife and with the listening ear of Dr Kayode Fayemi an erudite scholar in his own right we worked with the provost professor Fola Esan , a pride to our state and Nigeria in the field of medical sciences and professor Yinka Afolayan to resuscitate this Abiku medical school . The Governor had to squeeze water out of Ekiti State’s financial stone to begin building our pre medical laboratories. God smiled on us through TETFUND to bequeath buildings and furnishing of physiology, biochemistry, Anatomy, medical library, and Animal farm on the main campus. These buildings compare with the best in Nigeria . We then built a medical students hostel on the grounds of the General Hospital to house some one hundred clinical students and some offices for clinical staff. I cannot remember all those who worked tirelessly to accomplish all these but I cannot forget professor Akin Araoye who brought his experience from Ilorin and Makurdi to bear on his work as Provost. There was also Professor Oluwadiya among others .This was the stage of the development of the medical school which in spite of the prodigious effort of our colleagues in the university and the state government we could not get full accreditation for our medical school.
When Fayose was elected governor in 2014 for a second term I left even though some people tried to persuade me to stay . I did not want to give Fayose the fun of firing me on the radio . Obviously not much was accomplished in the next four years of Fayose stomach infrastructure campaign.
After Dr Kayode Fayemi returned to office as Governor he seemed to have been embarrassed that the medical school was still not accredited. In the meantime the medical school had lost some of its staff to the brand new Afe Babalola university which has a medical school and a new teaching hospital attached to it .The efforts of everyone including the current Pro chancellor and Chairman of Council Professor Tale Omole and the vice chancellor and provost hugely assisted and supported by the governor Dr Kayode Fayemi have finally paid off and the Labour of those who have contributed to making our dream of a medical school come to reality has not been in vain .But this is not the end of the road in fact this is the end of the beginning .We still need to build a teaching hospital near the university itself because the present so called teaching hospital is inadequate and it cannot be expanded because of the topography of its location among granite hills in Ado Ekiti . The university site is flat and more easily amenable to development.
I have a personal interest in the growth and development of the medical school and Ekiti State University of which by the grace of God through the instrumentality of Governor Kayode Fayemi I was the first Pro chancellor and chairman of council. Before I left the university as Pro chancellor we brought all the scientific papers of my late brother and an internationally acclaimed neuroscientist Professor Kayode Osuntokun to the medical library . We endowed a prize of N1000,000 ( one hundred thousand Naira) to the best graduating student of the college. The money for this prize endowed in perpetuity was contributed by Chief Dele Falegan ,former Director of Research in the Central Bank Of Nigeria who said he owed his life to God and the medical diagnosis of Kayode osuntokun . I added my contribution and the rest was provided by the Kayode Osuntokun Trust .Chief Dele Falegan said the council of the university should name the medical school after Kayode Osuntokun who is Ekiti State’s contribution to Nigeria and global medical scholarship . The council which I headed did not take up this challenge at a time when the medical school itself was inchoate and in any case it would have been inappropriate for me to sit on a council naming the school after my uterine brother that I loved so much . I would have been accused of nepotism! Whenever the time comes and if it is deemed necessary to accord recognition to Ekiti academic heroes I know his name will come up. I remember what professor Chike Obi the late Nigerian mathematician told me in a chance meeting in Ibadan , I believe in 1984. I introduced myself to him as a professor Osuntokun from the university of Lagos and how delighted I was in meeting the great man . He told me he was pursuing some documents about his retirement. As usual he railed about the insensitivity of our government that would abandon a great man like him to be eking out the last days of his life on some miserable pension . I of course agreed with him . He said are the Osuntokuns not from Ekiti. I answered in the affirmative. Then he said “you Ekiti people in a generation caught up with the best in academics in Nigeria .” I said tongue in cheek particularly in mathematics where the late Olubunmo was a professor of mathematics before him . Not many people know this ! “ Ekiti no dey carry last” I just hope the young generation would not celebrate the achievements of their ancestors but build on it and make Ekiti the Silicon Valley of Nigeria ! There is no other way to develop a state that has no mineral and little agricultural resources but enormous manpower. There are good examples like Japan and Germany to follow with their achievements based on no natural resources but enormous gray matter and know how . That is the stuff of Ekiti of old are made off and one hopes the present generation will not betray the past and will hand over a winning Barton to the future anchors in our human relay race .
