GLIT FOCUS
Some lives will also be filed underneath a unmarried heading: a occupation, a name, one defining fulfillment. Dr Tunji Olowolafe resists the workout. He educated as a health care provider, left medical medication in 1988 for industry, and 4 many years on, he has emerged as an investor, establishment builder, training recommend, and philanthropist. A lot of the paintings that claims maximum about him occurs clear of the cameras. As of late, as Chancellor of Ekiti State College and a driver in the back of a spread of important nationwide initiatives, his tale has moved past non-public good fortune to the extra enduring industry of giving again to humanity. Raheem Akingboluwrites.
The first departure was once the boldest. Medication presented a settled trail and he took every other, construction Deux Mission Restricted into a gaggle spanning infrastructure, development, engineering, consultancy and funding. He had to be told unfamiliar industries from the bottom up and earn credibility in rooms the place a clinical stage counted for little. The verdict was once much less a rejection of his coaching than an acceptance of a distinct problem, one that might ultimately take him into one of the vital nation’s maximum hard infrastructure and endeavor conversations.
His personal account of that adventure unearths the dimensions of the soar. Reflecting at the breadth of roles he has taken on, he mentioned: “Over the past 40 years, I’ve functioned as a civil engineer, design architect, biomedical engineer, whilst a marine specialist. There’s a caveat: with none formal qualification in any of them.” This can be a telling admission from a person whose profession has again and again required him to go into unfamiliar territory, in finding the precise other folks and construct one thing that works.
A vintage instance, he recalled, was once the Lekki-Epe Throughway in 2008, when he was chairman of Lekki Concession Corporate. “I used to be now not a civil engineer and had by no means constructed a street. We introduced the precise other folks, experience and capital to construct an asset that had by no means been performed earlier than.” The revel in was once instructive. It demonstrated that construction establishments isn’t at all times about possessing each and every technical talent oneself, however about recognising competence, assembling it and developing the prerequisites during which it may well ship.
His industry profession introduced different high-profile chapters. His affiliation with the Lekki Concession Corporate positioned him inside of one among Nigeria’s intently watched infrastructure tales, whilst his involvement in GZ Industries took him into production. Board seats and investments throughout sectors adopted. Via all of it, a health care provider’s dependancy remained helpful: perceive the issue, imagine its penalties and search for a sensible treatment.
That have seems to have bolstered a philosophy that now runs via a lot of his paintings. “Nigeria has skill and capability to construct world-class establishments,” is the conviction attributed to him, and it is helping provide an explanation for why his hobby has increasingly more shifted from what he can accomplish in my view to what establishments could make imaginable for others. This can be a delicate however necessary difference, as a result of establishments outlive particular person achievements.
The COVID-19 disaster in Ekiti State confirmed that intuition at paintings. In 2020, he served at the state’s Clinical Logistics and Mission Nomination Committee and supported efforts to make stronger healthcare infrastructure and diagnostic capability. The Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory at Ekiti State Instructing Sanatorium was once a few of the tasks related to that length, bringing extra refined trying out capability nearer to those that wanted it.
Medication has since discovered its long ago into his tale, in a distinct shape. In 2026, the Nationwide Postgraduate Clinical School of Nigeria conferred on him an Honorary Fellowship. The person who left the consulting room many years in the past was once being recognised through the occupation in a brand new bankruptcy of a adventure that had carried him a long way past medical apply. His profession, through then, had turn into an issue for what can occur when experience is mixed with interest and the willingness to be told.
Training has turn into every other defining bankruptcy. As Chancellor of Ekiti State College, he has driven the establishment in opposition to better virtual talent, sensible publicity and more potent hyperlinks between instructional studying and the arena of labor. By way of 2026, the college was once pursuing Mission Digi-Train for its 650 teachers, whilst the Basis had backed 37 teachers to global meetings since 2024.
For college kids, a few of the ones adjustments are extra tangible. EKSU’s accreditation on Springpod, a London-based careers platform, provides scholars and graduates get right of entry to to digital paintings reports with world corporations together with Amazon, Barclays, Deloitte and Rolls-Royce. The worth isn’t simply in including every other line to a CV. It’s in permitting a youngster in Ado-Ekiti to peer skilled probabilities past the rapid geography of the campus.
MIVA Open College carries the similar considering into every other a part of the training panorama. As its Professional-Chancellor, Olowolafe has argued that open and distance studying can cut back the geographical, financial and logistical limitations that stay many Nigerians clear of college. At his investiture because the establishment’s first Professional-Vice-Chancellor, he stated the burden of the project in phrases that had been each easy and revealing: “As the primary Professional Vice-Chancellor, MIVA Open College, I in finding myself status earlier than you with a weight of accountability this is slightly sober. I settle for this accountability with complete center.”
The phrases are hanging as a result of they divulge one thing underneath the general public symbol of the builder and businessman: an consciousness that establishments are in the long run about accountability. The cash fits the argument. The Gbemisola Olowolafe MIVA Scholarship commits 1 billion over 5 years to fortify 1,000 scholars at MIVA Open College. Every position represents a youngster whose instructional adventure may have been behind schedule or deserted as a result of monetary instances. Right here, philanthropy is expressed much less as a gesture than as an try to adjust the path of particular person lives. Probably the most telling paintings, alternatively, is nearer to house, in Are-Ekiti. The Tunji Olowolafe Basis has constructed an academic chain there that runs from secondary training to virtual abilities and tertiary alternatives. The Gbemisola Olowolafe Memorial Neighborhood Secondary Faculty and GOMTECH give youngsters get right of entry to to amenities, wisdom and probabilities which might be too regularly concentrated in greater towns. The Basis lately stories greater than 125 scholars at GOMCSS.
The reaction from the ones across the initiatives is revealing. At a up to date geoscience career-awareness outreach at GOMCSS, EKSU scholars offered JSS1 pupils to geology and wider geoscience careers. Prof. Adeyinka Oluyemi Aturamu, who participated as a speaker, described it as a privilege and thanked the Basis for supporting the initiative. EKSU pupil Boluwatife Osasona, who introduced to the pupils, mentioned it was once an honour and appeared ahead to extra alternatives to encourage younger minds.
Olowolafe has regularly expressed the realization that the place a kid is born will have to now not resolve what that kid can be informed. GOMTECH places that conviction into bodily shape. The 40-seat, solar-powered and attached hub gives coaching starting from virtual literacy to synthetic intelligence, coding, knowledge analytics and cybersecurity. The Basis describes it as a style supposed for wider replication, with its attractions set way past the rapid neighborhood.
For Ekiti, that makes him greater than a a hit son of the soil. He is without doubt one of the state’s notable fashionable benefactors, an ideal indigene whose connection to house has moved past sentiment into funding in other folks. In Are-Ekiti, the gap between a rural neighborhood and the worldwide virtual financial system is measured now not most effective in kilometres, however in get right of entry to, publicity and alternative.
His past due spouse, Gbemisola Olowolafe, runs quietly via a lot of this paintings. Her title is hooked up to the neighborhood secondary faculty, the virtual centre and the Gbemisola Olowolafe Centre for Ophthalmic Simulation on the Guinness Eye Centre, LUTH. The memorials have due to this fact been conceived as operating establishments, puts the place remembrance is transformed into one thing helpful to every other era.
The ophthalmic simulation centre, commissioned in July 2026, brings the tale virtually again to its starting. It provides eye surgeons get right of entry to to complex simulation coaching earlier than they carry out refined procedures on sufferers. The primary trainees finished the programme and gained certificate on the commissioning. For a former physician who left medical medication greater than 4 many years in the past, it’s an hastily becoming bankruptcy. Observed in combination, the items shape a recognisable development. Medication got here first, adopted through infrastructure and endeavor, after which through training, virtual get right of entry to, scholarships and clinical coaching. The street was once by no means instantly. What provides it coherence is the sluggish motion from non-public fulfillment in opposition to institutional affect, with each and every bankruptcy developing room for people to advance.
Beneath all of it is a undeniable set of values. Olowolafe says his grandmother taught him 3: arduous paintings, humility and honesty. She handed them on within the Ekiti dialect via songs and tales, and he later carried the similar message to graduating scholars at EKSU. The ones 3 phrases have turn into a ordinary thread in his public reflections on management, training and accountability.
Clear of boardrooms and ceremonies, he maintains an hobby in long-distance working, studying and self-development. Working rewards pacing and self-discipline greater than a quick get started. There’s a identical high quality in his skilled adventure, which has been marked much less through one dramatic soar than through the facility to stay transferring, converting path when important and closing engaged with the following problem.
Those that get advantages are increasingly more the easier witnesses. A pupil finding a virtual talent, a lecturer coming back from a global convention, a student encountering geoscience for the primary time, a firstclass graduate receiving popularity, or a clinical trainee mastering a gentle process on a simulator all constitute other expressions of the similar concept: that good fortune acquires better which means when it creates room for any individual else to transport ahead.
Buildinºgs climate, firms alternate palms and titles move on. What a pupil learns, or a surgeon masters, travels additional than the one who created the chance can practice. Olowolafe’s tale has moved from treating sufferers to construction companies, then establishments, and now alternatives for other folks he would possibly by no means meet. In that development lies the quiet measure of a lifestyles increasingly more outlined now not through what it has bought, however through what it has made imaginable for others.