ASUU OAU holds congress for missing professor

AGAIN, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife branch, last Thursday held a special congress in honour of a Professor of Nuclear and Medical Physics in the university, Professor James Bolarinwa Olomo.

It was exactly three years on Thursday since Professor Olomo mysteriously disappeared while on field work in Eket, Akwa Ibom State where he was on engagement as a Radiation Safety Adviser (RSA) to an oil company.

According to accounts of the incident, read again on Thursday by Professor Akintunde Balogun on behalf of the chairman of the OAU chapter of ASUU, Dr Caleb Aborisade, Professor Olomo was said to have checked into the Hotel Farlem situated on 8, Archibong Street, Afaha-Uku, Eket on Thursday October 17, 2014.

He left his room temporarily three days later, left his hotel key at the hotel’s front office, with the impression that he would soon return, with most of his personal effects still in his room. But that was the last anyone has seen or heard of him.

All efforts to locate him have been unsuccessful since then.

At the Thursday special congress, as ASUU OAU has done every year since his disappearance, the union described Olomo’s disappearance as “a shock” to the union, Olomo’s immediate department, and the university as a whole.

It also appealed to the Nigeria Police, the Osun State government where the missing professor hails from, and the Federal Government to use every means possible to find Olomo.

Several members of the union spoke glowingly of the missing professor, and the vacuum his absence has left in the Physics Department and the university.

His wife, Mrs Henrietta Olusola Olomo, who came with four other people, expressed her belief that Professor Olomo would still be found. She appealed, tearfully, to government at all levels to use everything in their disposal to help find her husband.

After all, she said, other people had gone missing and had been rescued by government.

The vice chairman of ASUU OAU, Mrs Deborah Makinde, presided over the congress.