BREAKING: UNILAG Appoints First Female VC

Prof Folasade Ogunsola has been appointed the first female Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos (UNILAG).

Ogunsola emerged the best among the seven candidates shortlisted for the top job.

Among those shortlisted were Abayomi Akinyeye of the Department of History, Faculty of Arts; Folasade Ogunsola of the College of Medicine; Mathew Ilori and Adeyinka Adekunle both of the Department of Microbiology and Botany, Faculty of Sciences; Imran Smith, Faculty of Law; Timothy Nubi, Department of Estate Management at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, and Ayo Olowe of the Department of Finance, Faculty of Management Sciences.

Born in 1958, Ogunsola is a professor of Medical Microbiology and a consultant clinical microbiologist and infection control at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.

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She specializes in disease control, particularly HIV/AIDS. Ogunsola was provost of College of Medicine. She was also the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Development Services) of the institution between 2017 and 2021.

She was elected as the acting vice chancellor of University of Lagos on 24 August 2020, by the university’s senate.

In 2018, she expressed concern on disease prevention and control in Nigeria. She identified poor hygiene and overuse of antibiotics as practices that foster antimicrobial-drug resistance. Providing a solution, she maintained that “sustained Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) infrastructure and programs should be built around a set of core components which includes guidelines, training, surveillance, multimodal strategies for implementing IPC, monitoring and evaluation among others”.

Speaking during a session with the media, she explained that the solution to reducing the 58% unemployment rate was for Nigerian graduates to begin innovating ideas that will enhance human life. She also noted that knowledge in itself isn’t sufficient, but its application in an appropriate manner to better mankind and enhance livelihood of others is what youths should be concerned about.

She was a founding member of the Nigerian Society for Infection control in 1998 and is also a member of the Global Infection Prevention and control Network.