UNILAG Again, Lost A Professor, Ajeyalemi to COVID-19

Another influential professor, Duro Ajeyalemi, has lost the University of Lagos (UNILAG) to the dreaded COVID-19 again.

It was confirmed that Professor Ajeyalemi died of Coronavirus in the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) isolation center on Wednesday morning.

At the age of 70, the late Professor of Education retired from UNILAG in November 2020.

He was a former dean of the Faculty of Education at the university and also the pioneer of the Joint Universities Preliminary Review Board’s Registrar (JUPEB).

Professor Folasade Ogunsola, deputy vice-chancellor in charge of development services at UNILAG, confirmed the death of Ajeyalemi to our reporter on the phone.

He said that the news of his death came to the university as a shock.

She said, ‘I realize that the great scholar died of COVID-19, but I have no proof of that,’ as to whether he died of COVID-19.

The university lost its former vice-chancellor, Professor Oyewusi Ibidapo-Obe, to death at the age of 72 on Sunday.

Sources close to the deceased have stated that he died from complications of COVID-19.

In 2000, Ibidapo-Obe was appointed UNILAG’s Vice-Chancellor, succeeding Jelili Adebisi Omotola.

After completing his tenure, he was later succeeded by Tolu Olukayode Odugbemi in 2007.

Born in Ile Ife, Osun State, on July 5, 1949, he attended Ebute-Metta (1955–1961) and Obokun High School/Ilesa Grammar School (1962–1966) at Lagos Street African Church Primary School.

He later attended Igbobi College, Yaba (1966-1968) for his secondary education in Lagos State, Nigeria.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Lagos in Mathematics.

In the Department of Civil Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA (1980–1981), the late Ibidapo-Obe served as a Visiting Research Associate Professor.

In 2007, among other things, he was a Visiting Research Professor at Texas Southern University in Houston, USA.