President Bola Tinubu has appointed John Oladapo Obafunwa, a renowned forensic pathologist, as the new director-general of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR).
Obafunwa also earned the title of the worst vice chancellor Lagos State University (LASU) ever had during his tenure between 2011 and 2015.
President Bola Tinubu appoints new Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) pic.twitter.com/Un8Ln3ku3k— Presidency Nigeria (@NGRPresident) July 22, 2024
Nigeria’s presidency announced Obafunwa’s appointment on Monday.
The professor’s administration was marred by protests from the university’s staff and students who claimed Obafunwa was a terrible VC.
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Lecturers and students almost physically attacked Obafunwa at LASU’s 19th Convocation Ceremony in 2014.
“We deliberately wanted to embarrass him (Obafunwa) because we knew many parents and guests would be here. The man is stubborn, and I can tell you he is the worst vice chancellor we have had in this school,” Kabir Ola, a LASU protester, told journalists in August 2014.
Under Obafunwa, LASU was notorious for official malfeasance and unaccountability. Students often wrote examinations without receiving their results, and many graduates could not get their certificates for so many years. His successor as VC found a backlog of 70,500 certificates that had not been issued to graduates almost one decade after they left the university.
Obafunwa failed to address these issues, and lecturers could not get the vice chancellor to help them with lingering owed salaries. The respective associations of students, non-academic staff and senior academic staff banded against their vice chancellor.
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Obafunwa’s tenure as LASU vice chancellor ended rather abruptly. Many staff and students didn’t remember the former vice chancellor fondly when Adigun Fagbohun succeeded him.
In fact, in March 2015, all the unions in the university — the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) — said they had sacked Obafunwa and that the 20th convocation of the univerity would not hold unless the government appointed one of the two deputy vice-chancellors to preside over the ceremony.
This stance they maintained despite government’s earlier pleas with the workers for them to allow Obafunwa complete his term, which was to expire on October 31, 2015, just seven months after the convocation.
Despite his unpopular tenure as VC, Obafunwa is a respected professional in forensics and pathology.
He was the provost of the Lagos State University College of Medicine between 2006 and 2010, and is widely considered as one of Nigeria’s foremost medical experts. He has been Lagos State’s leading forensic pathologist for over a decade.
He succeeds Babatunde Salako, whose tenure expires on July 23.
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