The Senate of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) on Monday last week stood in honour of its third Vice-Chancellor, the late Prof Ade Ajayi, fondly addressed by students as ‘Head of State’.
Ade-Ajayi passed on on August 9 and was buried at the weekend in Ekiti State.
The occasion did not only attract members of the university’s Senate, family members, friends, and dignitaries were also in attendance as they took turns to eulogise the late VC.
As a professor of History, the nickname-head of state, stuck to the late professor like a leech during the military era of the former Head of State, Gen Yakubu Gowon (Rtd) because UNILAG was partly seen as the only university born by the Federal Government through the Act of Parliament. The school, again, was seen by the students as a nation state and the late Ajayi as the VC automatically meant that he was the head of state.
“Once his car was sighted, shouts of ‘Head of State’ would always rent the air. Ministers, governors, even other Heads of State did not count for much. Things usually came to a head during convocations. Students wanted to make it clear who was the ‘Head of State’ in UNILAG. The then military Head of State (HOS) and his representatives were usually ignored and our HOS was always hailed anytime he spoke,” said the Dean of Engineering, Prof Omotayo Fakinlede.
Indeed, it was a moment of praises, honest retrospections and poetic rendition, laced with songs and applauses that reverberated the school’s Senate Chamber considered as Ajayi’s design because it was during his tenure that almost all the university’s buildings were erected.
“Apart from the main university library, formerly Yakubu Gowon Library, the main Engineering Complex, and the Mariere Hall, that were completed before he came, and the Senate Building after he left, it is no exaggeration to say that virtually every other significant building was delivered under his tenure,” Dean of Engineering, Fakinlede added.
Fakinlede, who was an undergraduate between 1973 and 1977, when Ajayi was VC spoke on behalf of his colleagues.
Fakinlede said because of students’ disdain for military rule then students never appreciated any gifts from the government to the university. He recalled a convocation where the military announced a big donation to the school, the students rather than showed appreciation, condemned the gesture. “The gesture was greeted with a shout of ‘too small’ showing utter condemnation from the students.
However, Fakilede said at the same event, some lecturers gave smaller gifts of books and artifacts to students which they appreciated so much.
According to him, those times were not easy as they were the era of military coups and regimes. “It was also a time of student unrest. In my time, the university suffered closure due to student unrest at least once every year and the protest were always against the military rule,” he said.
On his part, a Prof of History Tajudeen Gbadamosi, rendered an elegy titled: ‘Goodness rewards goodness,’ saying he grieved over the loss of his supervisor, mentor, motivator, benefactor, editor and co-author.
“I sob in sadness for the loss of our champion of African History. I choke with sadness at the demise of our academic manager. I heave and heave on the departure of our captain of excellence; oh dear! I sigh in sadness for this irreparable loss,” he said while reading the poem.
The VC, Prof Rahamon Bello, in his tribute, said: “Ajayi’s demise has robbed the intellectual community of one of its most effusive voices especially in the field of African history.”
Rahamon said African history owes him an enormous debt of gratitude for pioneering with a few others a nationalist historiography, which aimed at giving pride and confidence not only to Africans but to scholars on the beauty and essence of their continent.
“Prof Ade Ajayi was without doubt a transformational leader and change agent, who had very clear dreams of what public education should be.
“Many attest that he had the gift of innovative thinking, visionary spirit and tenacious patience required to successfully lead meaningful educational reform. Such rare skills were brought to bear during his tenure as the vice-chancellor of the university,” he added.
