Dr. Ezekiel Olagunju, a lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), recently received gifts and incentives from his students, who were recently celebrated in a viral video. The Morning Brief crew on Channels Television listened in on the lecturer’s conversation and provided insights. He also discussed his remarkable academic journey, from his first failure to pass the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) administered by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to his ascent to fame as a top academic.
Enjoy the excerpts:
Even though I’m not sure if those gifts have stopped coming, it was heartwarming to see your students drop drinks and bottles of water. How did it feel, Dr. Olagunju?
Well, I felt and I feel very great for the love from the students and their appreciation. It was heartwarming.
Dr Olagunju, we need to investigate you because this is not the norm in Nigerian universities. Either you’re knocking on the lecturer’s door asking: ‘ What happened to my results? Or they’re attempting to catch up on a missed class or something? What exactly have you done to win students over?
Well, it has been my life’s passion. My life is defined by three things. Number one is my past. Academically, I schooled in a village and it was not easy for me to come up very fast. But then, despite that the school was in the village, seeing myself successful and becoming a lecturer, made me know that anybody can excel in life. Even the fact that when I first wrote WAEC, I only passed in Yoruba, and everything else was F9, is incredibly humorous. It was so disturbing. So when I got home, I showed my sister and my parents, this is terrible. And while my sister was sobbing, she said, “You better thank God there are people who didn’t pass anything at all.”
I had to retake the test, and I passed, and I immediately began learning languages. So when I look back, having completed only one pass in all the subjects I studied in secondary school and now that I can speak several languages and lecture, I have a strong conviction that anyone can succeed. So because of my past, I don’t see anybody that can make it among all my students, even the worst. I lift them up, I support them.
Number two: it’s my passion for my students. I am so passionate that I have a vision that all my students, for now, are still very young. Some of them didn’t even know what will happen in the future, but I have a passion that if I teach them well, if I educate them well, they’re going to be great in life.
And over 22 years of practicing this, passion and putting this passion to play, I have seen that desire coming to the realisation that those young children of 20 to 22 years ago, I now see in America, see them in Germany, see them in the embassies, see them in different big places, many of them earning more than me.
So the vision is coming to realization. Number one is my past. Number two is my passion. I’m a child of God, which is number three. Once I became a child of God during the born-again experience, I have the love of God in me. And even when those students are abusing their time, I still see them as my own, as you can see from the perspective of God’s love. This is how I continue to model their lives and help me begin to plan them for a better future.
Interesting. How likely is it to replicate your experience at other universities, and why are lecturers so uninteresting or otherwise unfriendly?
Well, you know, the work of the lecturing is interesting. It’s like someone is preaching but isn’t ordained. Someone who preaches only to make money won’t preach well. A lecturer who has a passion for what they do would excel.
You may not be as passionate about the work that lecturers do, and one might not be the same as the situation in our country, where lecturers are not nothing special. If care is not taken, one might be angry with those students because, when they consider it, this is what the government is giving them. But the truth is that what we give is all it takes to make someone someone who is called to be someone else’s child if you are called to do it, have a passion for those children, and see them as your children.
Source: Channels TV
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