Olatunji-Bello bows out as VC after five years

Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has rewarded two Lagos State University (LASU) best graduating students for the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 academic sessions with N20 million each.

The governor announced the monetary reward during the institution’s 29th and 30th combined convocation yesterday.

The beneficiaries are Ayilara Olawale from the Department of Project Management, who emerged the best graduating student for the 2024/2025 session with a 4.96 Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA), and Adebanjo Samuel Oluolamide of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, who recorded a 4.97 CGPA for the 2025/2026 session.

Sanwo-Olu, who noted the 20,604 graduates as the largest cohort in LASU’s history, listed the graduating students to include 494 First Class students and 3,383 postgraduate students, among them 238 PhD graduates.

MEANWHILE, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Ibiyemi Ibilola Olatunji-Bello, has bowed out after five years in office, citing a 96 per cent first-year accreditation success rate and an increase in the university’s internally generated revenue from N3 billion to N13 billion as some of the major achievements of her administration.

Olatunji-Bello, while delivering her final convocation address yesterday during the grand finale of LASU’s combined convocation ceremonies at the Buba Marwa Auditorium, Ojo, described her tenure as one that transformed LASU into “the most subscribed university in Nigeria and the most digitally advanced among its peers.

She said she assumed office in September 2021 and was leaving behind “a university of proven excellence” after inheriting “a university of strong potential.”

The outgoing VC said financial sustainability was also central to her administration’s agenda.

She attributed the increase to creativity, leveraging internal capacity and the full automation of financial processes to block leakages that had previously affected the university’s resources, adding that the university executed more than 50 infrastructure projects funded through the Lagos State Government, Federal Government, TETFund, private donors and internally generated revenue.

However, at the ceremony, LASU conferred honorary doctorate degrees on three distinguished Nigerians, including Aliko Dangote, who was represented by his daughter, Fatima Dangote, for his contributions to entrepreneurship, industrial and human capital development; Akin Kekere-Ekun for entrepreneurship, finance and management, and Harriet-Ann Omobola Bola Adesola, former Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria, for her contributions to corporate finance and governance.