Adetoun Ogunsheye Quotes

Yes, it is true. There is no doubt about it because I made the first professorship and I sat on the Senate for the appointment of subsequent professors. The first two professors came from Ibadan and I was the first female professor in Nigeria in any discipline at all. I got it in Library Studies.

I couldn’t study medicine because Queen’s College didn’t offer sciences in those days.But there was an interesting issue before going to Yaba Higher College. After finishing from Queen’s College, my father went to my principal and asked him if I could take exam to go to Yaba Higher College. It was an all-male institution then. But the principal told my father they would not take me because I was a female and it was all-male institution. But my father disagreed with him, arguing that there was nothing in the instrument setting up that school that forbade women from attending it. So, I took the entrance examination, passed and was admitted. I was the only female student in the first year.

In the last 10 years, they have not.I will advise the government to formulate a national policy to support the elderly in our society, whether they are educated or uneducated. The elderly have contributed to the development of the country one way or the other. Not only that, I can tell you that old age is very expensive. To keep fit, the health of the elderly must be fully supported by the government.

I met my husband when I came back from Britain. One of my old teachers at Yaba Higher College saw me and was very happy I was back from the UK. I was not married. The teacher said he was going to introduce me to whom he considered as “the most famous bachelor in town”. He did and it was Ayo Ogunsheye – he was then a teacher and Assistant Secretary of Nigeria Union of Teachers. I attended a seminar and we (my husband and I) met. The day we met, it was like I met an old friend. It was fantastic. We started talking as if we had always known each other. He was wonderful. When we met later, I read his papers and critiqued them. It was fantastic. We loved each other when we were together but unfortunately, he died suddenly about 40 years ago. Since his death, God has continued to support me.

I started a secondary school. That secondary school is still in existence till today. After that, I got married. I had spent two or three years in the school at that time. Then, my husband got an appointment at the University of Ibadan. I moved there with him. At Ibadan, I joined the university as the Map Librarian.

So for me as a mother…what I sow now in terms of feeding my children properly with nutritious food will remain embedded even at old age.

When I finished at Yaba Higher College, one of my teachers had recommended me to take the entrance examination to Cambridge University, London. I took the entrance exam to read Geography at Cambridge but I had a problem because I did not do Latin in secondary school.

I became a professor in 1973 when the university librarian started a library school in UI and they asked me to come and talk about how to organise maps. After talking about that, they said they would like me to move over and start a library because then we were taking the promotion exams of the UK and (they) wanted us to establish an academic programme. So, I went to Boston, United States, and did a master’s programme in librarianship and then came back and started the Department of Library Studies in Ibadan. I started the first programme except postgraduate and master’s degree programmes in Ibadan.

I have a baptismal certificate signed by the mission. The date of my birth was in that baptismal certificate.