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Abiola Odejide Quotes
born 1946 Nigeria
Abiola Odejide (born 17 April 1946) is an Emeritus Professor of Communication and Language Arts at University of Ibadan. She was previously the Deputy Vice Chancellor at the university and was the first woman to attain such position at the 58 years old university.
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I am happy that some of my former students are also professors now.
I was dealing with the entire community with a wider forum; I think people liked the way I went about things.
I found it so absorbing, I love reading, it came easy to me.
Well, becoming a professor, yes. Because if you joined the academic staff in the university, you’ll be looking forward to becoming a professor but the Deputy Vice-Chancellor thing, it wasn’t on my mind at all.
We should aim to become strategic and effective within those roles and thus raise the profiles of women as did Nigeria’s first crop of western female educated activists like Margaret Ekpo, Olufunmilayo Ransome Kuti, Wuraola Esan, and grassroots mobiliser , Sambo Sawaba.
As DVC academic, I chaired over 25 committees and I didn’t have any major issue. So, I think it’s a question of one’s personality, one’s management style and as I said, I have been in university for quite some time. So, I have paid my dues.
Discipline was a major thing in our home, especially from my mum; she just didn’t take any nonsense. She was a loving person but liked people to be punctual, do whatever was assigned to them on time and without excuses. I think that must have rubbed off on my siblings and me.
There is the notion that women are not supposed to be in the public sphere. Basically, they are supposed to be in the private space, looking after their children, being in the kitchen and so on. So, the whole idea is that women are not supposed to be in the limelight; they are to be seen and not to be heard.
I think it’s also important to show that it doesn’t have to be a male terrain completely, if there are competent women, we should give them positions on merit. But don’t look down on somebody and say, she is a woman, she can’t do it or he’s a man, he can’t do it. That would be a wrong attitude.
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