By Ahmed Ajikobi
Africa’s first professor of Geology, Muhammad Jamiu Mosobalaje Olayooye Oyawoye, CFR is dead.
The highly respected intellectual died this evening in Offa. He was 96.
A crown Prince of Offa, Oyawoye was one of Nigeria’s most decorated intellectuals and certainly one of Africa’s best gifts to the world. He was widely respected across Nigeria and widely honoured abroad.
Born on August 12 1927 in Offa in Offa Local Government areas of Kwara State, Oyawoye was a geologist, teacher, researcher, field worker, ambassador of peace, religious cum community leader and a man many prefer to call a human bridge. He was educated at Offa and Ibadan.
He worked briefly at the Geological Survey of Nigeria from 1950 to 1952 and as fate would have it, the brief spell at the Geological Survey of Nigeria literally determined the career choice of Prof. Oyawoye that turned him into an internationally acclaimed intellectual celebrity fourteen years later.
Professor Oyawoye was at the Washington State University at Pullman in the United States for his bachelors and masters degrees before proceeding to the University of Durham in the United Kingdom for his doctorate degree.
He returned to Nigeria in 1959 and took up a teaching appointment at the University of Ibadan where he established what was to become the best geology department in Africa.
Seven years later, precisely in 1966, he was appointed Professor of Geology, the first African to be so honoured. That feat gave Offa community its first professor.
Many landmarks bear his name at the University of Ibadan, where Professor Oyawoye groomed the nation’s, and Africa’s first generation of geologists.
Academia helped shape Baba Oyawoye’s world view and prepared him for life’s endless battles. In fact, elders of Offa even today still discuss with nostalgia how Baba Oyawoye was the clear choice of Offa kingmakers when the throne of Olofa was to be filled in 1970.
Prof. Oyawoye was 43 and must have reasoned that a life of seclusion in a palace, despite its attraction to some, was not his line. He reportedly turned down the offer, politely, and continued the search for more experience which he was to later deploy to impact on his community. It turned out to be a well thought out decision.
And for his contribution to the world of research, he was given the national honour of Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic, CFR by the federal government of Nigeria and has a street named after him in a strategic location in Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital city.
