Vice Chancellor who faced EFCC and many fires

ON Monday, May 8, 2017, a Vice Chancellor-elect was announced for my alma mater, the University of Ife (Great Ife!), now Obafemi Awolowo University; he is Professor Eyitope Ogungbenro Ogunbodede (not Ogunmodede). He is a professor of Dentistry and also an alumnus of Great Ife. He will, on Wednesday, June 7, 2017, be inaugurated as the 11th substantive Vice Chancellor, succeeding Acting VC, Professor Anthony Adebolu Elujoba, himself also a Great Ife alumnus. The shenanigans that attended the process of appointing a new VC to succeed Prof. Bamitale Omole had made an otherwise simple and straightforward process long-winding and tortuous; thus throwing the university into a tail-spin and causing it to break into two major antagonistic camps with sharply divergent views and irreconcilable differences. The search for solution led one group to head-hunt Elujoba as the man with the Midas touch; hence the ‘Come down to Macedonia and help us’ SOS couriered to him. Elujoba’s election as acting VC was virtually unanimous, throwing the entire university community into wild jubilation. A deeply religious, self-effacing, humble, and let’s-to-it-the-right-way purist, Elujoba has not disappointed.

Last Thursday, I spoke with the professor of Pharmacognosy, who does not sit on the VC’s chair but perches on other “lesser” seats in an office he is eager to vacate. Such a rarity! When news of his appointment broke and I spoke with Ogunbobede, his immediate fear was that Elujoba might insist on leaving immediately! Mercifully, Elujoba will stay till Wednesday June 7th, affording his successor the opportunity to soak in the euphoria of (long-delayed but God-ordained) victory, receive the streams of well-wishers as well as work his phones, and cross the t’s and dot the i’s ready for take-over. For the “wind of change” blowing across my alma mater, the courageous and bold stand of Governing Council chairman, Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi (our own dear Comrade), and the other members of Council will be discussed in coming series.

On Elujoba’s current mood: “I am happy like you have said; I am actually on top of the world that what the Lord has prophesied has come true, come true in my life-time and I want to thank the name of the Lord for it, I want to glorify His name and I want to thank everyone whose hands had been on the deck to make this a reality. This had been prophesied shortly before I arrived on this post and to see it happen dramatically with some ups and downs that one could not avoid – and they are the ups and downs that made a man more perfect – this makes for joy. Before gold can become gold, it must be fired. And I have seen a lot of fires, there is no doubt about it, but those fires were to make things better; to see this day the way it is.”

His place in history: “God chose me as a channel to do these wonders. I call it wonders because many of the times during the hard times, things would just be resolved. I never thought it was my power but it was God Himself that was doing everything and if you ask me again how did I do it, I will say I didn’t do it, God did it. The first time that I knew that God would do it was actually the day of my election. I perceived and I saw angels doing the voting for me and when I heard the result, I said ‘this could not be from any human being; it must be God Himself that did it’, and shortly when I got out of the hall of election, I found myself having greater power in me than I had when I was going into the hall and I was convinced at that time that it cannot be anything but success because God’s hand was all in it.”

Why he rejected initial pleas to serve: “I thank God but if you say I am fulfilled; I will, however, say I am not fulfilled until I get to heaven; that is actually what I am gunning at but as to the activities of the past 10 months in this university, I was very sure after the election, just like I have said, that God wanted to use me – clearly – and who was I to say that I would not yield to the push of the Holy Spirit? So at the initial stage, I did not resist anything, I gunned to do it; I was ready to do it; completely ready and to put in everything that I had into the success of the journey. But when the six months ended, which was what was contained in black and white in my letter of appointment, certainly, I refused to go ahead and I was believing that I had completed the term and initially I knew that I prepared for six months; even during the first six months people were saying ‘you are not going to leave after six months’; I always resisted it, that God had not told me about it and until God had told me, I would not support anyone saying that I would spend one day beyond six months. But when people were persuading me, I told them I would not be an unlawful person; that upon my dead body would I say ‘I want to exceed six months.’ By law, it is clearly stated that you cannot exceed six months if you are an acting Vice Chancellor; and I would not be the first chief executive to violate that. So when members of Senate said ‘you have no choice, you have to go along’, I still maintained that Senate should not allow itself to contravene the law but at the end they said whether I liked it or not, whether I supported it or not, they were going to transport that recommendation to Council and that was how we ended it. But Council came, and by the grace of God, Council supported Senate and that is why we see today as it is”.

How he weathered the storms: “Let’s give glory to God. I am sure this will show you clearly that I was not in charge. I wasn’t in charge right from the word ‘go’ like I told you before, and throughout the period – during threats, during crisis of EFCC – I was composed because I knew I had no power. The One that has the power was in charge; even when the EFCC locked me up and at 9.30 pm, they asked me to come out; that I was a free man, I said ‘it cannot be.’ They told me ‘you are going to come back the following morning’ and I said ‘I better sleep here.’ So they had to persuade me seriously. The time they came, I was already sleeping. I set my alarm at 12midnight. I said at 12 midnight, I will take my bible – I was with my bible, using it as pillow for my head – I would stand up and start praising the Lord and all these security men would join me. But at 9.30 pm they knocked at the door; and they took me out and they said I was a free man and I said ‘it cannot be.’

And one soldier came and said they didn’t know I was a great man and I said ‘I am not a great man’ and they asked how did it happen and I pointed at the sky and said ‘God did it’. He did it for Paul to get him out of prison and He did it for Peter – at that time I was Peter. So I got out of the prison, which I call prison because it was actually prison. I was sleeping on the floor; so it was not better than a prison. The Lord has kept this university the way it is; it is not that there were no challenges; there were temptations here and there; there were threats here and there – and that is exactly what the devil does; he doesn’t allow a place to be restful. He would try to say this place is too peaceful; it should not be like this but each time the devil tried it, he was disappointed. It is not that there were no agitations; it is not that there were no betrayals; it is not as if there were no people meeting day and night to see that peace leaves this place but each time the fire came, I was always composed, I never got agitated for one minute.

When I heard about a threat, I would just say ‘God, You are already in control. You cannot do anything up to this time and then just let it get destroyed. You must come up again’ and before you knew it, the threats would come down again. Not because of my efforts; absolutely not because of my efforts. And each time it happened, I always remembered that God already prophesied it and that was what was contained in what I wrote to Senate on my first day in Senate as the chairman of Senate. I said that I knew that there would be several fires in front of me and I told Senate members ‘Please, don’t go in front of me but come behind me. So let me face the fires; you will only feel a little bit of the heat but I needed all of you behind me; that I knew they are not fires that will ever consume me but that I would see fires’. Today, I can count several fires but none of them by the grace of God has consumed me because God was in charge. How did God first remind me that He was in charge? Just a few months before I suddenly, miraculously became acting Vice Chancellor…”

What did Almighty God remind this Ife-born staunch evangelist? He also said he had a dream: “I had a dream, which I now know was a revelation from God.” What was the dream and what did God reveal that steeled him and made him succeed where others had failed? Next week, God willing!