Worried by the infrastructure decay at the Medical College, University of Ibadan, the acting Dean, Prof Adebola Ogunbiyi, invited all the old students, who are now doctors produced by the college to a zoom meeting.
The Professor was sick with worry about the infrastructure decay and rot at the medical college she oversees in Ibadan.
She is aware that the Nigerian government is cash strapped to fund it, so she came up with a master stroke, which was to tap into the resources and social capital of the alumni produced by the medical college scattered all over the world to give the medical college a facelift.
A Zoom meeting was organised last Monday, and the link was sent to the former students of the medical college.
Starting off the meeting, Prof. Ogunbiyi narrated the challenges and plight the current medical students at the college are facing.
The current medical students of the college need a new hostel and their classes also need to be refurbished.
The acting Dean of the College ended her speech by appealing to the alumni of the college to support her in rebuilding and restoring the lost glory of the medical college.
Her speech opened the floodgates of donations from the medical doctors produced by the Medical College, University of Ibadan.
The donations were coming in trickles.
1 million naira here and 200,000 there until it got to the turn of Dr. Philip O. Ozuah, an old student of the college, who is currently the President and CEO of Montefiore Medicine in New York.
Philip Ozuah did not say too much as he went straight to the point of making a donation of $1,000,000 (N700 million).
In his words, “UI’s Medical College shaped and refined him into the man he is today, so he has the duty to give back to the school.
When Dr. Philip announced the $1,000,000 donation, all of the old students in the zoom session began shouting, “Wow!” Wow, like an ambulance’s siren.
Even the dean, who called the zoom meeting, was speechless as she did not see that coming.
None of the old students of the medical college could donate again since Ozuah had set a standard they could not match.
From shouting Wow! Wow! The Zoom fundraising meeting came to an end with the closing prayer said immediately.
It should be noted that Dr Ozuah had his medical degree certification at the University of Ibadan and did his internship at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital before he proceeded to Southern California for his Master’s program and got his PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
