By Jide Osuntokun
I first met the then young Dr Ladipo Akinkugbe in 1961, 59 years ago when he came to give a lecture on water-borne diseases to students of Ibadan Grammar School during my Higher School Certificate course.
Our principal, Archdeacon Emmanuel Ladipo Alayande was known to cultivate the friendship of promising and intellectually brilliant young men and Akinkugbe was one of such young men. My Alma Mater, Christ’s School Ado Ekiti did not have HSC in arts subjects then.
Even some of my very brilliant colleagues in the sciences preferred to have different experience than the one we had in Christ’s School by going to such schools as Ibadan Grammar School, Oyo Baptist College, Government College Ibadan, Abeokuta Grammar School etc.
But quite a number got into the University of Ibadan through the concessional entrance examination rather than going through the circuitous route of the Advanced Level examination.
Akinkugbe comes from a patrician family of the Akinkugbe/Ladapo lineage in Ode-Ondo. By the way the only other place prefaced with “Ode” in Nigeria is Ode-Itshekiri or “big Warri”. Without going too much into history, the people of the two places are linguistically related.
Akinkugbe after his primary school in Ondo went to Government College Ibadan which distinguished itself by offering British-type “public school” kind of education. Unlike Barewa College in the northern part of the country, its students’ intake were usually the best selected after rigorous examination process.
My brother Edward Abiodun was a senior to Akinkugbe in Government College. Akinkugbe’s classmates included the Nobel laureate for literature Wole Soyinka (W.S) and the late Professor Muyiwa Awe, another great man who made a first in physics in the University College Ibadan, before a PhD in physics in Cambridge.
I must say if Akinkugbe had not studied medicine, he too would have made a mark in English literature judging from his mastery of the English language.
One just has to listen or read his public lectures and autobiography “Footprints and Footnotes” to see the erudition that is native to the man.
Akinkugbe belonged to the class of medical students at the University of Ibadan who had to leave Nigeria to go to London University College to finish their clinical studies before graduating M.B. B.S. (London).
Those who came after him to Ibadan which by then had one of the best teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth, the UCH, finished their medical education in Ibadan but continued to get degrees of London University until 1964 when the University of Ibadan regrettably severed its ties with the University of London.
I was at the University of Ibadan at that time and many of the students who started earning degrees of Ibadan after 1964 were not very happy with being denied London degrees.
Would we have lost anything if we had maintained academic ties with the University of London? The modern trend in higher education nowadays is that the great universities of the world viz Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, London, University of California at Berkeley etc. are establishing overseas campuses in the Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore and China to offer opportunity for students overseas for their brand of quality education.
After graduating, Akinkugbe went to Oxford for advanced clinical studies earning a PhD (Oxon) in the process. Fortified with this and membership of the Royal College of Physicians, Akinkugbe joined the teaching staff of the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan.
He rapidly rose through the ranks becoming a professor and dean of the faculty in his thirties. His rise to the top was simply meteoric. He was succeeded by my late brother, Kayode Osuntokun, distinguished and world acclaimed neurologist with whom he developed a great friendship.
During the expansion of tertiary institutions in Nigeria during the 1970s, Akinkugbe was asked to build initially a university college in Ilorin like the University of Ibadan Jos campus established in 1971.
He had hardly settled down there and laid out his plans when he was asked by the federal government to become the vice chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, the bastion of northern Nigerian nationalism.
The Obasanjo/Muhammad military government at that time in the late 1970s was driven by some kind of nationalist fervor and thought it could unify the country by making the nation’s elite work in areas far away from their ethnic home land.
For example, Professor Agodi Onwumechili was appointed vice chancellor of the University of Ife, J. C. Ezeilo was appointed vice chancellor of Bayero University, Kano and Umaru Shehu was appointed vice chancellor, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
The experiment in nation-building nearly ended in tragedy for Akinkugbe and Ezeilo who had to be spirited out of Zaria and Kano following students and staff rebellion against them on the grounds of their ethnic and religious differences.
If left alone in Ibadan, Akinkugbe would have adorned the vice chancellorship of the University of Ibadan with erudition, scholarship and refinement. After this adventure in Zaria, he was later called upon to chair as pro-chancellor the governing councils of one or two universities in the country.
He finally became the pro-chancellor of Ondo State University of Medical Sciences, a controversial university established by Governor Segun Mimiko on the eve of the end of his eight-year term as governor.
This university was obviously a sop to the people of Ondo town who were complaining that their native son did nothing for their town in eight years.
After retirement from Ibadan University, Akinkugbe set up the Ibadan Hypertension Centre with his own funds offering first class treatment to many of the people suffering from this silent killer.
The Ibadan Hypertension Centre which Akinkugbe established and ran with his own funds unfortunately closed down in 2018 after he celebrated 60 years of medical practice and as the medical titan reached the age of 85.
It is a pity that the government of Oyo or the federation could not take over the centre and run it as a referral centre or as an adjunct to the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital.
Probably 50 percent of us Nigerians are hypertensive. This disease is a silent killer, the management of which our governments have paid little attention to.
Akinkugbe on his own pointed the way that we should go. It is a pity that our over-politicized country pays little regard to things that are worthy and deserving of attention and emphasis.
Akinkugbe paid his dues to Nigeria and to humanity. He definitely earned his epaulettes as a distinguished professor of medicine.
A grateful nation accorded him the highest honour of the NNOM. He was involved with credit to the development of higher education in Nigeria.
His advice may not have been listened to all the time by those in power but his contributions are on record and history will be kind to him. Sixty years of medical practice is worth celebrating.
The death of Professor Oladipo Olujimi Akinkugbe CON, CFR, PhD Oxon, M.D London FRCP London, DSC (Honoris causa) is a national loss, an African loss and a global loss.
On a personal note, his death is a loss to us in the Osuntokun family. He was an in in-law because his nephew, Damola Ifaturoti is married to my niece Lola.
He served on the Kayode Osuntokun Trust pro bono and with distinction for a decade. We all will miss this gangling genius and embodiment of all that is good and wonderful. Indeed, as the Yoruba’s will say, Erin wo Ajanaku sun bi Oke!
The Nation
