Professor Olajide Desalu, a retired Professor of Anatomy from the University of Ibadan, is above 92 years old. In this interview by our Science Editor, SADE OGUNTOLA, he speaks on a wide range of issues, including the early years of the Nigerian Tribune which will clock 75 years on 16 November, 2024. He also addresses issues around health care and medical education in Nigeria, among other issues.
The Nigerian Tribune will be 75 years old on 16 November 2024. What was your first contact with the newspaper and what is your wish for it as it looks forward to its centenary?
Well, I am happy for the Nigerian Tribune. And I’m proud to note that it is one Nigerian newspaper that has survived all its contemporaries, including Daily Times. The paper (Nigerian Tribune), Awolowo’s newspaper, was started in November 1949. At that time, people did not take much to it. You know, we Yorubas are very funny, particularly those of us from Lagos. And I’m not joking. They looked at Herbert Macaulay as a Lagosian, the papa of this, the papa of that. And, of course, Azikwe now turned up with West African Pilot, too. You know, Daily Times was there, all right. Macaulay did not set up a newspaper. But the point is that we were just wondering what could beat Daily Times. What I’m trying to say is that we just felt: what can they do (in Ibadan) that is better? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? That was the attitude. But then, the paper has survived. It has survived all of them. Daily Service, West African Pilot, including the one from the North (New Nigerian), they are all dead. I’m happy that the Tribune has survived these past 75 years. I’m happy. I read Sunday Tribune every Sunday because I enjoy some people who write there. It’s not just because I’m from this part of the country, but it is because the newspaper (Tribune) has improved considerably.
The point I’m trying to make is that we, Yorubas, we don’t respect and support ourselves. We say, can any good come out of Nazareth? I must confess, we must learn. I’m not saying we should discriminate. Look at what happened last year, this last presidential election. The South East states, all five of them, voted for no other person than Peter Obi. The least had 91 percent of votes. Others had 95 percent, 98 percent, 96 percent, and I think 93 percent or something like that. No other political party had 25 percent of votes in those five states. And then we talk of tribalism. No, no. I want this to be put out for the world to read. There are other political parties in the five states. APGA, set up by Ojukwu, is there. That was the one that had the least votes. But when it came to the governorship election, they all split out again. When it came to the presidential election, the only Igbo man that was there was Obi and they all voted for him and him alone. In Yorubaland, our own Yoruba man lost in Lagos because a lot of them (Yoruba) thought nobody could beat Tinubu. But they forgot that they didn’t go out to vote. They realised that if they were not careful, they were going to lose the governorship. That’s what happens. They were so scared. They thought, oh, nobody can beat Tinubu in Lagos. What happened? The Igbo man won. Obi won Lagos. It was bizarre.
You are above 90 years old and still mentally alert. What does it take to enjoy a long life? In particular, what is the secret behind yours?
This is my biography. I want to give it to you. It is by grace.
What is the trick?
It is by the grace of God. I don’t know how I became what I am today. It is God that made it happen.
Do you have a particular diet? They keep telling us, do exercises, eat well, sleep well, jump up and down. Is it that you have genes for longevity?
Well, that may be part of it. But I don’t know how to put it. My maternal grandfather, that’s my mother’s father, died at 96. My mother died at 92. But my dad died at 74. My own father died at 74. My grandfather, who I didn’t know, died before my own father married. My father went to teacher training college in Ibadan and left in 1920. And he finished at teachers training college in Ibadan. That’s where my father went to school. He was a teacher. He met my mother when they transferred him to Lagos. He met my mother in Lagos. She is a daughter of a reverend gentleman and superintendent to the school and he married her. So, what do I say? I didn’t know my grandfather so I didn’t know how old he was when he died. But I saw his picture, heavily bearded, white beard, old man. He must obviously be 80 or more. But I believe it is by His grace that I am what I am today. Whatever I am today is by His grace. There is one chapter in the book titled ‘My Crisis in the University of Ibadan’ that nearly took me off the university.
What was it about?
Well, I had a crisis in the 1976/1977 session. The World Health Organisation sent me to Makerere University in Uganda to start off the anatomy class. They started their session in July- September, while we were on vacation at the University of Ibadan. I was to help them teach the first new students anatomy and embryology.
So, I got a Nigerian who was newly appointed senior lecturer in the department to act for me during the three months I was away. Within a few weeks, he started acting for me, he started looking for ways and means to go tell them that I had been ‘chopping’ money.
And that’s what he did. But I had a grace, the secretary of the department, when he saw the way he was behaving, took two important files that had to do with embalming in the anatomy department, he put them in a big envelope, gave it to a messenger to take to Mrs Desalu at home. He told her to keep the file until I came back.
Those two files saved my life because the man was telling the university that I had been embalming bodies and I had been making money which I didn’t report to the university. But he had done so much in the few weeks that I had been away and had reported so much money to the university, so they could imagine how much I had been ‘chopping’ over the years.
He got it to a point that he reported to the vice-chancellor. The vice chancellor said, look, wait until Desalu comes. He was not satisfied. He went to the police. He was not satisfied. He wrote a long message and gave it to Daily Sketch.
Daily Sketch began to serialise what it called corruption in the anatomy department. There is a whole chapter in that book. I survived it.
But I was not surprised. He was a young Nigerian, a Yoruba like me, an Ijebu like me. He also did MBBS and BSc anatomy and PhD in anatomy. I got him employed. My thinking was, here is a man that could take over from me. From that moment, I decided that he should go his way and I would go my way.
That is what happened to me. That’s why I said it is by His grace that I am what I am today. Daily Sketch had to apologise to me when the whole thing went to court.
The university got an accountant to come and audit all the things in the university. I just gave those two files to them that had to do with embalmment. There were some embalmments that I did which I didn’t charge money for; they were related to staff of the university or their relations. There were some that I said, look, you are going to buy me chemicals to embalm the body. It only cost about 30 naira in those days. They bought the chemicals and I helped to embalm the bodies. I didn’t take a kobo from them. It got to a point that a member of council, when they presented the auditor’s report, saw the name of his father on the list of those that I did not take money from. He said, that’s my father’s name; that I got money from him.
Of course, the university discounted what he was talking about because it was clear that there were lots of staff of the university that I didn’t take money from. When I asked him, he said, but your technicians, are they not the ones you used as a front? He said he gave them money. He said that I was using them as a front. That’s what the man told me, a colleague of mine, who was a friend of mine. I said, so you believe that?
Another one said he was prepared to sacrifice his one-year salary if they found Desalu guilty. That’s another Yoruba man on the council. At the end of whole thing I was cleared. That’s why there’s a chapter on it in the book. I didn’t want to write on it, it was Professor Jide Ajayi that said I should write it. I said it was because of the people who were involved. He said that I should write. I said the two people that I knew that I would have mentioned there, they were already dead. I said they were not here to defend themselves. He said, well look, the whole country was totally involved with this. I should write my own story in my book. The chapter is ‘My Crisis’. It was God that saved me. So, by His grace, I am what I am today. I have five grandchildren, two of whom are medical doctors. I’m a Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON). I was given that honour by the Federal Government. That was during Buhari’s tenure. And then the Methodist Church knighted me as a Knight of John Wesley at the Methodist Church, Bodija, Ibadan.
You are from an illustrious family of medical doctors, how does it feel to have such a background?
I don’t know about an illustrious family of medical doctors, but I belong in the third generation of medical doctors in my family, in the sense that my granduncle, that is, the younger brother to my grandfather, on my mother’s side, Dr Akinola Maja, was a medical doctor. My own uncle, the younger brother of my mother, Dr Akintola Pearse, was an ophthalmologist. So, that is second generation. I’m in the third generation of medical doctors. And it just happens to be so that I studied medicine because I had been so used to medical doctors in the family. In fact, I was born in Akinola Maja’s hospital. As I was growing up, I was spending more time in his hospital in Garba Square in old Lagos.
Therefore, it was only natural when I was in secondary school and I was doing well in science that the thought was that, ‘He wants to be a medical doctor. He can be a medical doctor’. But there’s a little hitch in that story. The hitch is that when I did my school certificate, I failed biology. I got an ‘F’ in biology in school certificate, and I knew the reason why. I did not follow instruction in the practical examination. The practical part of the examination said, answer questions sequentially. It was one of my best subjects. When I got to practical class and I saw the questions, I just picked the ones I knew best and answered them. I did not read the instruction.
At the end of the examination, one of my friends said, ‘Jide, did you read the instruction? Did you read it?’ Well, I did not read it. I knew that I had failed because it was the Cambridge school certificate. It was not WAEC, it was Cambridge. So, I said, ‘I know I have failed’. And of course, that was what happened as a result. That created a crisis in the family.
Another uncle of mine on my mother’s side, who had no son, wanted to send me to England to do electrical engineering because I passed additional mathematics, physics, chemistry, but had an ‘F’ in biology. The man said, ‘Look, you cannot do medicine because you do not have a pass in biology’. But I said I wanted to do medicine. I knew the reason why I failed biology. He called my dad to inform him that he was going to send me to England to do electrical engineering because he was an electrical contractor. And my dad said, ‘Look, Jide wants to do medicine. I don’t dictate to my children what they want to do. They choose what they want to do. And I said, ‘I’m going to repeat the biology, and I’m sure I’ll pass it’. And I did. As such, my granduncle was also happy that my dad did not force me to go and do electrical engineering, because my dad was a teacher, and he wondered where he was going to get the money to send me to England. But the old man said, ‘Look, God will provide. Let Jide do what he wants to do’. That’s all. That is what happened. That’s the path that I chose. I did not only do medicine, but I ended up being an anatomist, which is basically biology. The human biology, more or less, is anatomy. And that’s exactly what happened.
I went to Britain, did my A Levels. I didn’t only do biology, but I also did botany, zoology, chemistry and physics. And I got three ‘A’s and a ‘B’ at advanced level. The ‘B’ is in physics; chemistry, botany and zoology were ‘A’s. So, in A levels, I got three ‘A’s and a ‘B’. That’s how I was able to enter Bristol University because Bristol University would not take you with anything less. That’s the history behind my being a medical doctor.
What was your experience like as a medical student at the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom?
Number one, I left Nigeria in August 1954 to do my A-levels and get into university. I got into university, all right. As I said before, failing biology made me look as if I could not do well in medical school. As it turned out, I got my A-levels, which I did six months before I was due to write it. I was due to write the A-levels in May/June 1956. I entered for it in London in the November/December examination rather than wait till May/June 1956. And I ended up with three ‘A’s and a ‘B’. So, as far as I was concerned, I was up to it. And my dad was angry with me for doing it.
Looking at the state of medical education in Nigeria today, especially the loss of experienced medical trainers to the ‘Japa’ syndrome, what do you think should be done to save the future of medical care in this country?
You asked a very difficult question. It is difficult in the sense that everybody looks forward to having financial security by the time they are a professional. Looking back, as a little boy, my granduncle, as I said, the medical doctor, Dr Maja of Lagos in those days, the Baba Eko of the Action Group, the man was making good money in his private practice. But he had a very good way of doing it. Every patient that came to him, he charged them in guineas: one guinea, two guineas, or five guineas, but he would not say bring the money now. You could pay on a monthly basis. If you could only afford to pay half a guinea every month, he would just write your name down and you would be paying him on a monthly basis to pay for charges. But now, everybody wants to charge big money. Everybody wants to be paid a big salary. Everybody wants to make big money. That is what is driving people away to do Japa.
They are not being well remunerated. The doctors are not being well remunerated here. They are poorly paid. I will tell you that. When I finished, I came home, I worked in UCH for six months before moving to the anatomy department. That’s another story of my life. I actually did my house job in England for one year, from the 1 August, 1961 to 31 July, 1962. I entered the boat on the 3 August, 1962.
Boat or ship?
Well, ship, that is, MV Apapa. I came straight; UCH had given me an appointment. I was interviewed in England for a job in UCH. I came straight to UCH and worked there for a six-month contract. The moment I entered the boat, UCH had started paying my salary because that was the rule at that time. Half the salary would be paid the moment you entered the boat. We started getting full salary when you landed. Those were the colonial days. The colonial rules were the same. We were only two years after independence. There was not much change. Things were good at that time.
So, what do you think should be done to keep our doctors?
What I’m saying is that remuneration is the first thing. I don’t know what has happened suddenly. Health is supposed to be both state and federal. I don’t know what has suddenly happened that everybody wants to rely on the Federal Government to take care of everybody. State governments are not doing what they were doing before.
After independence, they messed up everything. So, you now find a few people go to work with government. They are not satisfied. They don’t have enough equipment for them. And everybody is not happy. So, they take off and go somewhere else, where they are well remunerated, where they have the equipment to do what they want to do. Nigerians are flying high in America and Britain today in the medical profession, a lot of them, a lot of boys and girls that were trained in UCH. They go to Britain and America, even Canada. They are heading institutions. That is what is happening. That is the reason why people are leaving. They get there and they pass exams which the whites cannot pass because they have been given good training here.
I know that and I have seen them. That is why we have these problems. The trainees here are being well trained. But the system is not too right for them to stay. No. There are issues with the system. The system is not right at all and they don’t have good equipment to work with. My youngest child did medicine here. She graduated in 1999 and did house job, got married and the husband is an engineer. He was born in England, so they went off to England. She got there, and did her MRCP, a specialty in medicine. She passed it the first time. Then she realised that it was better for her to go into general practice because they needed to look after the children that were coming after her marriage. She then went on to do the specialty in general practice. She is now heading a whole unit of general practitioners in England. There are four of them that are doctors in the practice. They do one weekend a month. There are four weekends. They are able to look after the family and the rest of it. So, there are lots of Nigerians who are heading general practice in England today. That is what she is doing. And the children are doing very well. She is doing her job. Her husband is doing very well. So, I think it is a case of rearranging the system, giving them commensurate remuneration and letting the facilities be there for them to work with. That is what we need.
What is your assessment of anatomy teaching now?
One has to be very careful here because things have changed a lot. We have a problem in this country today. And that problem has got to do with the subject, anatomy when it comes to medical education. Nigeria has developed a situation where there are more anatomy graduates who are not medical doctors than medical doctors who are teaching anatomy. Now, most medical schools have started having BSc anatomy, going to Masters and PhD. In fact, there are about 50 universities now that are having BSc programmes in anatomy outside MBBS. That has created a big crowd of non-medical doctors who are now teaching anatomy. That is the danger that we are facing today. There are a lot of non-medical doctors teaching anatomy.
Why is that a danger? Why is it an anathema when non-medical doctors teach anatomy?
The danger is that a lot of these people cannot teach anatomy the way it is needed for doctors to be doctors. They just learnt the science of anatomy. Whereas when I teach anatomy, I teach it with respect to what they are going to meet when they get to the hospital. Most of these people do not have any clinical experience. They are not medical doctors. If they have any knowledge at all, this is what they are taught in the course known as clinical anatomy, which is being taught by the other teachers who are not even medical doctors. That is what I have seen. What is happening now is that in most of the medical schools, there are not many medically qualified doctors teaching anatomy.
What is the implication of that on the quality of training of doctors?
There won’t be any problem in the quality of doctors but when they get to the clinical side, it just gives extra job for the clinical teachers to give them some background to the clinical aspects that they have not learnt. They still get by. But the danger is that you now have a department where the head of the department is a non-medical person.
How did you become an anatomist?
Basically, I applied to the University of Ibadan when I was doing my house job in England to come and be a demonstrator in anatomy to see whether I would be able to continue with my interest in anatomy. But I didn’t get any reply and I realised that if I was not careful, I would come without having a job. So, I applied to UCH. Of course, I was qualified to work in UCH. So, I was given a job there. Professor Kenneth Dike was the vice chancellor of UI. He was in England to recruit staff for the university at that time. He saw my application to Ibadan which I didn’t get a reply to. He called me in Bristol and asked if I was still interested in anatomy. I said, ‘Yeah, I am interested’. He said I should see him in London. I saw him. He said when I got back home, I should keep in touch with him. He was in Ibadan. UCH is also in Ibadan. I said I didn’t know where UCH was in Ibadan. When I was leaving home in 1954, they were just laying the foundation of UCH. But I knew where the University of Ibadan was because they moved to the main campus in 1953. So, I knew that place. He said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s only about five kilometers difference’. He said I should keep in touch with him. But then, I was lucky. That’s why I say it is God’s grace in my life. As I entered the boat on the 12th of August, 1962 in Liverpool, here was Professor Dike on the boat coming home. We were both together in first class for 13 days.
He was telling me how I could become an anatomist. He actually showed me how Ibadan could train me to go into the science of anatomy. With my clinical background, I would be good enough to teach medical students.
The other person that God seems to have done the same thing for was Professor Grillo. He was senior to me by two or three years. He went to start off the medical school in Ife. He was the foundation dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences in Ife. He also did medicine in Ireland, the Royal College of Surgeons, and then left for Cambridge to do a BA in Tripoids and then a PhD in Anatomy. And then he came to Ibadan.
I think I came to Ibadan in 1960 or 1961. I can’t remember now. But I met him when I came to Ibadan in 1963. I had not had my training then but it was also in Ibadan that I was sent to Yale University in 1963 for two years where I did the science of anatomy. And I got a Master of Science degree from Yale University in America. I came home and continued my research work to get a PhD. That’s my background to being an anatomist. But having done the clinical work before, I had the experience to be able to train medical students.
What are lessons that you want young people, young teachers and students to learn from you as regards their choice of anatomy as career?
Well, actually, it’s difficult to talk about that. You know why? The majority of those people who are doing BSc Anatomy today want to do medicine. But because they couldn’t get into medicine, they delved into the science of anatomy. They do their degree and then the bright ones among them are counseled to turn to do Masters or PhD. You can still have a career in anatomy. Not all of them can be teachers in anatomy. But there are other things they can do which have nothing to do with medicine. I have a paper which I gave in Benin many years ago at one of the conferences of anatomy. The other things you can do. You don’t have to be a teacher. Not all of them can even be a teacher in anatomy. So, the thing about it is that those who are there now, who are non-medicals, are just there because they couldn’t do medicine. Also, some of them, after they finish, go back and start doing medicine again. So, that’s the situation.
But what else can they do if they don’t have space to teach?
The other thing they can do is in the paper that I gave you in Benin many years ago.
Can you just cite one or two of those things they can do?
Well, they can go into sports medicine. In fact, a lot of them are now going into physiotherapy. A lot of them have funeral palours. In fact, there is a danger in this country today. Non-doctors and non-anatomists are now embalming bodies like quacks in this country today.
What’s the danger in that? They are corpses.
It’s like having a non-medical person opening a clinic and treating patients. You cannot just say because the body is dead and so you can treat it as you like. That is why there is the Anatomy Act, which was brought from England in 1933. Only those who are qualified to touch dead bodies, human bodies, should touch them. They are not animal bodies. That’s why there is the Anatomy Act. But the majority of those who are doing the funeral parlours that we have in Nigeria today are those who didn’t do anatomy. Funeral parlours exist in England and America. They are under the law; the council regulates them. Why do we do things differently in this country? That is the thing that is killing us here.
Is it right for anybody to just be embalming bodies without any law controlling them? Look in Yemetu there, one laboratory attendant that I knew in Ibadan started embalming bodies in the homes. He gave them injections in different parts of the body. They do all sorts of things like that. And then they go there every day to still be injecting parts of the bodies again. He was not trained; he was merely a lab attendant here in Ibadan.
Can’t embalmment be done in one’s house if it’s one’s father or mother that has died?
Is that how to treat a human body? Can’t I open a clinic in my house? Am I a medical doctor? It’s like having a quack practising medicine.
You were involved in setting up anatomy departments in some northern Nigeria universities. What was the experience like? And would you say the educational gap between the South and the North will ever be bridged?
You are assuming that there is an educational gap already? Is there really an educational gap? You assume that there is an educational gap. There is none. Excuse me. Those of us in the South here, we are invited to be external examiners up North. Those in the North, they are invited to be external examiners in the South. There is a common curriculum. There is a level at which you expect things to have been done, things to have been taught. So, it is the same from the North, South, East to the West in Nigeria and they are just as good as going to Britain or America and passing the exam there.
So, it is a wrong assumption.
I do not see any gap, to tell the truth, because as far as I am concerned, we are invited as external examiners to examine the students. I was an examiner in Zaria. And they come from Zaria to be external examiners in Ibadan. As far as I am concerned, that is why I say you are assuming that there is an educational gap. They all do the same school certificates. They all write the same exams. As you have now, everybody does JAMB’s UTME and other exams. The only difference which I can see is that they tend to lower the cut-off mark they use to admit them in the North.
They call some states educationally disadvantaged states…
That has been there all along in order to get some people from the North to get admitted into universities in the South. The only thing that I have found very nauseating is that in some parts of the North, they will only admit you if you are from that part of the North. They won’t take you if you are not from the North. And that’s unfortunate. I’ve seen it in Kano. In fact, it’s bad to the extent that a Pakistani teacher in Kano, the daughter was not admitted to the medical school in Kano because she was not from Kano. The woman had to send her daughter to a medical school in the South.
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