University of Lagos (Unilag) has appointed its first female Vice-Chancellor.
Professor Folasade Ogunsola was picked on Friday by the selection committee of the institution as the 13th substantive Vice-Chancellor.
She will take over from the outgoing VC, Prof. Toyin Ogundipe, in November.
A professor of clinical microbiology, she was raised in the University of Ibadan where her father, Akin Mabogunje lectured.
As a child, she mimicked medical practitioners by using dolls as patients, while offering medical care to them.
She attended Queen’s College, Lagos. Between 1974 and 1982, she obtained her first degree from University of Ife and a master’s degree from College of Medicine, University of Lagos, then proceeded for her doctorate at University of Wales between 1992 and 1997.
Career
Ogunsola was Acting Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos for a short period in 2020 when the University was plunged into crisis as a result of the removal of the Vice Chancellor by the University Council.
She was also the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Development Services) of the University, a position she previously occupied before ascending to the institution’s Acting Vice Chancellorship.
Prior to being the deputy vice chancellor, she was the provost of College of Medicine, University of Lagos.
Her research areas have been centered on the regulation and management of viral diseases, particularly HIV.
She is the principal investigator at AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN) at University of Lagos.
She has also been the chairman of Infection Control Committee of Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Additionally, she is the chairman of the National Association of Colleges of Medicine in Nigeria.
In 2018, she expressed concern on disease prevention and control in Nigeria. She identified poor hygiene and overuse of antibiotics as practices that foster antimicrobial-drug resistance.
Providing a solution, she maintained that “sustained Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) infrastructure and programs should be built around a set of core components which includes guidelines, training, surveillance, multimodal strategies for implementing IPC, monitoring and evaluation among others.”
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