A retired professor of Microbiology and ex-Dean of Students at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Olu Odeyemi, speaks to ALEXANDER OKERE about the high points of his career and his foray into politics
A retired professor of Microbiology and ex-Dean of Students at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Olu Odeyemi, speaks toYou attended the popular Ilesa Grammar School, Osun State. How will you describe the years you spent there as a schoolboy?
My father brought me up as a farmer and I was inspired by that to study Soil Science. But he did not know that I studied the course. He was very happy when I graduated as the best student in my department. I experienced racial discrimination in the US, not seriously in Canada but more at Cornell University in New York. Sometimes, when I sat on the campus bus that took us from one place to another, the white student sitting next to me stood up and changed their position because I am black. It also happened in the laboratory when I did my research; when I set up my experiment, some of them dismantled the experiment. It even happened in the church.
Also, I had an older brother whom I looked up to in my career and who helped me in life. He was my mentor. He was an academic. He was a professor of Chemistry at the University of Lagos and he rose to become the deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Lagos. He was like a standard to me. He was my confidant; I went to him any time I had a challenge.
The Action Alliance lost that election. Did you feel you should have been given a chance to test your popularity? Service in public office, sometimes, comes with a lot of pressure to do the bidding of corrupt individuals…I will never compromise.I just went straight for the truth. I don’t regret not comprising as a rector or dean. Maybe people took that against me; I don’t know.Can you talk about them?People came to me to admit students that were not qualified and I refused. In some instances, people came to me when we dismissed students that entered the school with forged results.
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