By Gabriel Dike
Professor Johnson Olaleru is of the Department of Mathematics, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka, Lagos. At the last convocation, he produced five out of nine PhD graduates from the department. He also produced 15 PhD graduates, out of which two emerged the best overall PhDs.
He spoke with The Education Report. Excerpts:
What attracted you to Mathematics?
Right from my secondary school days, my ambition was to be a teacher even though my family members objected and wanted me to study Medicine. I don’t see anybody who is brought up with good Mathematics teachers that will not like the subject.
It is a language of precision that commands logical reasoning. Success in life is directly proportional to your mathematical or computational reasoning ability. I love the subject and was blessed by good teachers.
What are your contributions to the body of knowledge in your field?
My primary area of research is Functional Analysis, even though I had to add Optimization, Topology and Algebra to assist some of my PhD students who preferred to work in those other areas. My major contribution is in Fixed Point Theory. If I am to use a layman’s language, I had to extend known results in that field to accommodate more applications in applied mathematics and, consequently, in engineering and business studies.
Furthermore, I developed new iterative schemes that would help in finding the correct solutions of some mathematical models. Other researchers in related fields have globally cited my work.
Are you worried about students’ performance in Mathematics at secondary school level?
It is not a recent development. It has been like that even in my secondary school days. The performances of students in Mathematics have been generally poor and those students who are good in it don’t want to study Mathematics in the university because of their misinformed mindset that Mathematicians will always end up as teachers.
How can students overcome the phobia of Mathematics?
The solution is not totally with students. It starts with government. Competent Mathematics teachers, preferably those who are certified professional teachers, should be asked to teach Mathematics right from primary and secondary school.
Teachers actually play the major role. If they frighten the students and teach to make it look abstract and difficult, the students will develop a phobia for the subject. If they teach what they themselves don’t fully understand, no student under them will understand too.
I remember my boy, while in the secondary school. His Mathematics teacher blasted and abused him for his poor performance in the subject one day. That was the day my boy gave Mathematics a kiss of goodbye.
In a civilised country, such a person should be taken to court or recommended for punishment. He is a bad teacher. A good teacher is trained to bring a willing student from low level to a high performer in Mathematics.
Mathematics is a language of communication, which any well-motivated and persevering student can learn like any other language. So, students should think of the diverse applications of Mathematics in modern times and see it as a subject they can and must learn.
Determination, perseverance and steady practice make the subject easy. Exposing some applications of what they are taught in real life situations will be a good motivational technique.
How many PhD graduates have you produced?
By the grace of God, I have produced 14. One is a professor and two are now associate professors among them. Four of them are female. I am still counting.
You produced five PhD graduates out of nine in your department, how did you achieve this?
I was able to achieve it because the students were well motivated to get it. Without the motivation of the students, the supervisors can achieve little. First, they knew that those I supervised earlier finished in record time of four years or less without anybody wasting their time unnecessarily.
I have to be on their neck too to work hard, because there are a lot of legitimate distractions to academic study in Nigeria. Commitment and sacrifice are needed on my part to read their work in record time and move them to the next level. That is one of the reasons professors develop grey hair very fast. It is not an easy job when you add lecturing and other administrative duties.
How do you feel producing the best overall PhD graduate in 2022?
Dr. Joy Umudu is not the first best overall PhD graduate I produced. In 2014, I produced Dr. Hallowed Olaoluwa, who also won the national prize of the best PhD thesis and was the youngest PhD graduate in the whole of Africa then. I am proud of them and feel happy.
Unfortunately, there is no recognition or reward for that feat to encourage supervisors in Nigeria. It is not an easy job to supervise a single person. When you understand that professors in Nigeria earn N500,000 gross monthly salary and those in Republic of Benin earn N1.5 million, then you will understand that we are at the lowest level of motivation for productivity.
Which is easier, managing undergraduate or postgraduate students?
None is easy nowadays. Both groups are legitimately distracted. In a commercial city like Lagos, many undergraduates are distracted with the need to survive or make money to compete with their peers. They want minimal lectures and want to get good results without working for it.
Many come to do postgraduate to mark time and get the kind of job they are looking for. Virtually all-postgraduate students who register as full-time are actually running it as part-time because they are committed to other jobs. We need committed students to be at their best. There are a few exceptions of very serious and committed students. Those few are those that are our motivators.
Do you recall an encounter with a student?
A good teacher will find it difficult to forget most of his students, whether well behaved or otherwise. You must have individual touch with them because their challenges and abilities are different. So, the memory is still fresh in my mind.
I can mention Dr Lanre Wojuola who is now a Physics Lecturer in a South African university. He was admitted to study Medicine and eventually transferred to Physics because he felt medical practice was not his calling.
He ended up with first class in Physics after breaking a record of 17 years. He took one of my courses and I gave him a full mark in a question he attempted even though he got it wrong.
Why I gave him full mark was because the approach in answering that question was so unique. I felt then that only a genius would go through that very difficult approach. In Mathematics, we don’t just mark answers but the method too.
Many of your students have described you as Chike Obi of their time, do you agree with them?
Obviously Chike Obi was my teacher and his shoe was so big that I never imagined my small leg fitting into his shoe. Those are legends. The only thing is that a good number of those legends in Nigeria did not produce people after them.
Prof Chike Obi produced no PhD graduate while I was the only PhD graduate produced by my great supervisor who also had international repute. I don’t blame them because the conditions are different and many prospective PhD students at that time prefer going abroad for PhD.
Did you ever have a personal encounter with Chika Obi?
Prof Chike Obi taught me Differential Equations in 1984/85 session. Those lecturers were very committed at that time. The only day he missed his lecture was the day I prayed that he would not be able to come because I was not prepared for his test that day. He sent a message that he was sick and needed rest. It was not my prayer that caused the sickness anyway.
Are your children taking after you in Mathematics?
If you say taking after me in Mathematical sciences I will say yes. Computer Science, some aspects of Physics, Statistics, Engineering, etc fall under Mathematical sciences.