Celebrating the life of an ICON and friend of the University – Prof. Gbolahan Oni (1950 – 2025).

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Celebrating the life of an ICON and friend of the University – Prof. Gbolahan Oni (1950 – 2025).

Prof Gbolahan Oni was a major benefactor of our University as he was instrumental to securing the grant from Bill and Melinda Gates Institute of Population and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), Baltimore, US, where he was working then. The fund amounted to over US$ 2.3 Million cumulatively. That fund brought significant development to the university particularly through landmark developments in the three units that originally constituted the Population and Reproductive Health Partnership, viz the Department of Community Health and Institute of Public Health of the College of Health Sciences, and the Department of Demography and Social Statistics of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Several other units of the University also benefited significantly, including the Centre for Gender and Social Policies, and the Departments of Pediatrics and Child Health, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dermatology and Venerology, and Sociology and Social Statistics.
That fund and the associated program enabled the university, among others, to send several faculty members to JHSPH for training and other capacity development activities; established the first Master of Public Health Programme with a distinct track in Population and Reproductive Health in the country; and, offered scholarship to the earliest cohorts of MPH students. The grant also singularly funded the establishment and development of the Population and Reproductive Health Partnership office in the College of Health Sciences (which is now a part of the Institute of Public Health [IPH]), and was instrumental to the establishment of the first Health Research Ethics Committee in our University through the platform of IPH. The grant also funded University-wide research, which went beyond the partnering units and included research in areas as diverse as law and mathematics.
Professor Gbolahan Oni was an amiable Christian gentleman who was devoted to helping his country and other Individuals, and deeply passionate about the academia in Nigeria, and institutional development. OAU was particularly close to his heart during his lifetime. May his gentle soul rest in peace perpetually in the bosom of His Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.