As a Corps Member, I Was Made Dean Faculty – JAMB Boss Recounts Journey to Stardom

Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB),Professor Is-Haq Olanrewaju Oloyede, has disclosed he bought his first car, a former , at N600 as a Graduate Assistant at the University of Ilorin.

Oloyede who hawked oranges on the streets of Lagos as a young boy to make ends meet, is a Professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies and hails from Abeokuta South Local Government Area of Ogun State. He began his secondary education at the Progressive Institute, Agege, Lagos, from 1969 to 1973 and later proceeded to Arabic Training Center Agege, Lagos (MARKAZ) where he learned Arabic and Islamic studies.

The former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin studied a certificate course at the University of Ibadan and taught for a while at Nawair-Ud-Deen School.

He said, “I later gained admission by Direct Entry to study Arabic at the University of Ilorin and graduated with a First Class in Arabic Studies and deployed to the then Open University of Nigeria In Lagos for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.”

As a Corps member at the Open University, I was a Dean of a Faculty and was controlling things that I ought not to be in charge of ten years thereafter. I knew it was the wrong way to start because the facilities at my disposal were more than what was expected of a fresh graduate and were not sustainable.

Oloyede said the luxury he was exposed to made him return to the University of Ilorin to complete the national service having realised that life should not be as easy as that, saying it was that straightforward, everybody would have been living in a golden house.

“On the invitation by the University of Ilorin, I went back to complete my NYSC despite ample opportunity to go into the Nigerian Army, NTA; Federal Mortgage Banks,” said the professor.

The University of Ilorin offered me Graduate Assistant which I believed was the right way to go with a salary of N580 (Five Hundred and Twenty-eight naira) monthly which I used to buy my first car, a Passat that costs N600 (Six Hundred naira).

“When I received my salary, I quickly went to the dealer to tell him that I would pay twice for the car. So, I became a car owner with six hundred naira.

The 64-year-old scholar, who was born and raised in Lagos under the watchful eyes of his maternal grandmother having lost his mother at a tender age, was made to hawk oranges on the streets of Lagos while growing up in order to make ends meet.

Professor Is-Haq Oloyede is the current Secretary General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs as well as a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.