Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Professor Omotoye Olorode To Interview Attahiru Jega

He will be 81 in the next few months.

Still alive and healthy….

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Date: Monday, December 6, 2021 at 8:40 AM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Professor Omotoye Olorode To Interview Attahiru Jega

A legend interviews a legend. As an undergraduate at BUK, the name "Professor Olorode" was larger than life even though he lived in Ife. We marveled at his prodigious, multi-disciplinary intellect, his revolutionary fire, and his humility. He was the Karl Marx of Nigeria. We sought his views for clarity on Marxist epistemology and praxis. I'm  glad to know that he is still active. 

 

Farooq 

 

 

Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.com


Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.

 

On Mon, Dec 6, 2021, 6:44 AM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Professor Omotoye Olorode To Interview Attahiru Jega

 

 

 

Omotoye Olorode retired as a Professor of Botany at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in Nigeria on September 30, 2008, after forty-one (41) years of teaching, research, and intense public service and engagement in popular mass and labour movement activities. After that, he was contract Professor of Botany at the University of Abuja and Olabisi Onabanjo University at Ago-Iwoye, from where he finally retired to live in Ogbomoso studying at a small Biodiversity outfit. He is a member of a large extended family and a dedicated nuclear family with wonderful biological and social children.

He was born about 1941 into a family whose forbears were originally from Ile-Ife.  The paternal family were farmers, while the maternal family were traditional cloth weavers. Pre-School, he grew up in a completely traditional Yoruba ambience which became gradually swallowed up, literally, by Western and Middle-Eastern cultures.

From primary school experience in a Baptist School in Ogbomoso and an Ansar-Ud Deen School in Lagos, he imbibed the triple heritage of Yoruba (traditional), Judeo-Christian, and, to a lesser extent, Islamic, culture.

He trained as a teacher in Ogbomoso and Osogbo in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In Osogbo, he met radical nationalists during the Lumumbist (Congo Independence) movement and became familiar with the writings of H.O. Davies, Nnamdi Azikiwe (both of Nigeria) and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.

He started undergraduate studies at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, where he met lecturers like Kalu Ezera, G.E.K. Ofomata, Babs Fafunwa etc. and student leaders like Ken Emezie, Adaka Boro and Ibezim Chukumerije. He had to transfer to the University of Ife in October 1966 because of the impending Civil War.

He was one of the three 1967 1st Class graduands (all transferees from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka) at the University of Ife. He was appointed Assistant Lecturer and proceeded to the University of Kansas, Lawrence, where he obtained a PhD in Botany in 1970. He returned to the University of Ife in October 1970.

Since 1970, Dr. Omotoye Olorode has taught Foundation Botany, Systematic Biology, Plant Taxonomy, Biostatistics, Cytogenetics, Genetics and Evolutionary Mechanisms at Ife, Bauchi, Akungba, Abuja, and Ago-Iwoye. He has supervised many PhD students, some of who are now retired Professors. He has published journal articles and books in Cytogenetics and on weeds, the Grasses and the Flowering Plants.

He has invested a large amount of his time and talents in the struggles of the labour movement and specifically in education and organisation in ASUU and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). He was a member of the radical Ife Dialogue Committee and the Ife [Socialist] Collective that joined other radical university campus groups at Nsukka, Calabar, ABU, Jos, Port Harcourt, Lagos, Ilorin and Ibadan to erect, with the NLC, the foundations of ASUU in Nigeria's labour movement since the early 1980s. In this regard, he has contributed, and continues to contribute, to the working class and popular education through public lectures, symposia and rallies; and through articles and books on political economy, on the education sector and culture, and Nigeria's history.

 

Sunday, December 12, 2021

5:00 PM Nigeria

4:00 PM GMT

10:00 AM Austin CST

 

Register and Watch:

https://www.tfinterviews.com/post/attahiru-jega

 

Join via Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88686434686

 

Watch on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/tfinterviews/live

 

Watch on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2lvX7A2iVndiCq0NfFcb0w/live

 

 

 

 

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