Nigeria’s Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo has eulogized the country’s first Professor of Medicine, the late Prof. Theophilus Oladipo Ogunlesi saying he showed what it meant to live by values necessary to build people and institutions while also contributing to the common good of the country.
He stated this on Friday in Sagamu, Ogun State, at the funeral service of the late Ogunlesi, who became the first Nigerian Professor of Medicine in 1963.
Prof. Ogunlesi died on January 19 this year at the age of 99.
The Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, other dignitaries and government officials also graced the funeral service held at the Anglican Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Sagamu, Ogun State.
The VP, on behalf of the President, and the Federal Government, commiserated with the family of Prof Ogunlesi, the government and the people of Ogun State, even as he praised the late professor of medicine for his impact on society.
Recalling an interview the late Professor of Medicine granted in 2017, Prof. Osinbajo observed that, indeed, Ogunlesi lived a life that was dedicated to public service.
The Vice President referenced some direct quotes by Prof Ogunlesi from the interview.
For instance, he quoted him saying, “Real wealth means being fulfilled in the assignment God has committed into your hands, and being able to put smiles on the faces of other people who are in need.”
Also, the VP noted that the late Ogunlesi stated in that newspaper interview, that his “lifelong business has been, and still is, to take care of the sick, promote health and prevent sickness, through health education, and helping the poor and the needy as best as I can.”
Describing him as a great Nigerian, an African colossus, and a man who, by his scholarship and practice, made global impact in medicine, Prof. Osinbajo observed that the late Prof. Ogunlesi was the first professor of medicine in Nigeria, the first Nigerian head of the Department of Medicine at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, and the first president of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria.
On retirement, the late Ogunlesi was also Professor Emeritus of Medicine since 1983 at Nigeria’s Premier Medical School, the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan.
