A lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Dr Ezekiel Olagunju, was recently celebrated in a viral video when his students lavished him with encomiums and gifts. The lecturer spoke with the Channels Television?s The Morning Brief crew and gave insights into what transpired. He also spoke on his incredible academic journey from his bottom-level failures during his first attempt at the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to his rise into being a stellar intellectual.

Enjoy the excerpts:

I don?t know if those gifts have stopped coming but it was a heartwarming moment seeing your students, just from the people who dropped bottled water to the ones who dropped drinks. 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 missed a course or something and they?re trying to catch up? So what exactly have you done to worm your way into the hearts of your students?

Well, it has been my life?s passion. Three things define my life. 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. It?s even a very funny story that when I first wrote WAEC, I had passed just in Yoruba language, every other thing was F9. It was so disturbing. So when I got home, I showed my sister and my parents, this is terrible. And I was so sorrowful but my sister said: ?You better thank God at least there are people that didn?t pass anything at all?.

I had to write the exam again and I passed and then I started learning languages. So when I look back, coming from zero level, one pass in all the subjects I did in secondary school, and today that I?m able to speak several languages and I?m a lecturer and all that, I have a strong belief within me that anybody can make it. 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. Number three is the fact that I?m a child of God. 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 doing the wrong thing, I still look at them as my own, you know, as from the perspective of the love of God, I still love them and that helps me and it is still helping me start to model their lives and prepare them for a better future.

Interesting. How possible is it to replicate you across universities and why do we find lecturers either cranky or just not accessible?

Well, you know, the work of the lecturing is interesting. It?s like somebody preaching and is not called to preach. Somebody preaching just to earn money, that person will not preach well. If somebody is a lecturer and has a passion for what he?s doing, then the person would do it well.

You know, the situation in our country, the takehome of lecturers is nothing so special and if care is not taken, one would want to be angry with those students because when you think of it, this is the little the government is giving, one may not be passionate about the work and all lecturers are not the same. But the truth is, if you are called to do it and you have passion for those children, and you see them as your children, then what we give is all it takes to make them somebody in life.

We need to appeal to the government to do more to appreciate the people mentoring the lives of these young ones, because usually if somebody is in the university lecturing, he has access to lives. If that person is not well remunerated, there is a great danger. It?s very important that the government looks into this. (Channels TV)

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