UNILAG graduates 379 first class students as Jega, others get honorary degrees

The University of Lagos will produce 379 first-class graduates at its 54th Convocation scheduled for January 17.

The institution’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Folasade Ogunsola, revealed this on Wednesday during the pre-convocation press conference that heralds the institution’s 54th Convocation.

Giving a breakdown of the graduates, the VC said a total of 17,464 students out of which 10,578 are first degrees and 6,886 postgraduate students will bow out during the convocation billed to hold from Monday, January 15 to Wednesday, January 18.

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“This year we will be graduating 17,464 students. Of these, 10,578 will receive first degrees and 6,886 are postgraduate.

“Of those with first degrees, 340 are first class with 97 coming from Management Sciences, followed by Science with 57 and Engineering 47. From the Faculties of Pharmacy, Basic Medical Sciences and Clinical Sciences, there were 39 distinctions 24 of which were from the Faculty of Pharmacy,” she said.

Ogunsola stressed that David Akanmu from the Faculty of Engineering, with a perfect score of 5.00 emerged as the overall best-graduating student and also the best-graduating student in Science.

She said that the convocation lecture titled, ‘Decolonising African Higher Education for Transformational Development,’ which would be delivered by a distinguished professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin, Prof. Toyin Falola is aimed at restructuring the education system handed down during the colonial era.

On conferment of honorary doctoral degrees in recognition of personalities, she said the institution would award the degrees to Prof. Toyin Falola of the University of Texas, Prof. Phyllis Kanki, a professor of Immunology at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health in Boston and Professor Attahiru Jega, a Professor of Political Science.

“This year we are awarding degrees to three such persons, two men and a woman. Prof. Toyin Falola, of the University of Texas at Austin – a globally acclaimed influential humanities scholar whose wide-ranging scholarship has placed him at the zenith of the global academy.

“Prof. Phyllis Kanki, a professor of Immunology at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health in Boston through her work in West Africa was the first person to isolate HIV2 which causes a milder form of AIDS that was more commonly found in West Africa and Professor Attahiru Jega, a Professor of Political Science, a sound intellectual, an astute administrator with a strong sense of ethics who revolutionised Nigeria’s electoral process,” she said.