Adenike Osofisan Quotes

It was very difficult but not impossible. I learnt time management and multitasking from home and from my secondary school. These came in handy.

I am grateful to God for all. Each has had its own impact in different ways, so it is difficult to identify one as being the most memorable.

I am his first critic. He is my editor. I have read and watched all his plays. I even attend his rehearsals.

Our guardian and counsellor in Aiyetoro, Mr Olumide Kuti, encouraged me to read computer science. He asked me to go to the library to read about it because I had no idea what the discipline was about then. Aiyetoro, being an American school then, had a very good library. So I read a book on computer science and fell in love with it instantly.

I had no culture shock. Many of my teachers in Fiwasaiye Girls’ Grammar School in Akure were foreigners from Britain, US, India and Trinidad and Tobago. I also had a pen pal. But I experienced it when I was at Comprehensive High School. One of our female teachers called me and I said yes, Mrs XYZ (not the real name).

Our stories are very interesting. He was a science pupil who became an arts pupil because of Principal D. J. Bullock. I was an arts pupil and I became a science pupil by providence. We are both familiar with the two terrains.

There are many things that make Lord’s Schools unique. They give the students holistic education and teach them the fear of the Lord. The children are trained to be good citizens of Nigeria. They also have a cattle ranch, poultry, farm, among others.

We met in my hometown – Akure – when he was commissioned by the Akure Students’ Union to stage a play. The play was about politicians and my father, Chief J. O. Adedipe, was a politician. He was a lawmaker between 1954 and 1959 and I was curious and wanted to see how the likes of my father behaved. The play was a masterpiece. So I congratulated him at the end of the play. I was not aware that we had met earlier at the park when he arrived in Akure. He later told me that I did not answer him when he greeted me earlier.

As for Kudirat too, the heroine of democracy, I felt so highly elated that I am being honoured along with those two heroines. I feel proud about it.

For me, mathematics is the simplest and most interesting subject that does not require cramming but understanding from basic principles. I guess the love for mathematics is natural for me. General Science was first introduced to my set at Fiwasaiye in 1966. I loved the physics portion of the general science so much and decided to convert to science from arts.

Of course yes. It was not an easy thing in the past for men to accept women in authority. Even women at the time were to not as supportive as they are today. I learnt to separate motherhood from ‘workhood’, if you know what I mean. I was a completely different person in the office from who I was at home.

I don’t know. Well, I was happy. You know that kind of feeling, a couple of mixed feelings. I was very happy and joyful. At the same time, I just wished my dad was still alive to witness it.

Doing what I enjoy doing.

Sunday is the only different day; it is the day to rest.

I went to Georgia Tech because it was listed among the 10 best colleges for computer science education. Yes, computing education was relatively new but I studied computer science/economics at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and was among the first set of students that graduated in 1976. One of our lecturers then, Dr Odeyemi, already had a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Manchester as the first PhD holder in computer science in Nigeria.