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OF TEACHERS THAT TEACH WELL
Austin Isikhuemen pays tribute to Felix Okieimen, a university teacher who touched lives and changed them for good
I have never had an opportunity to write an appraisal of my teacher. That unlikely assignment, whose very proposition will rankle most people in the academia, will hardly ruffle feathers in the pure private sector where three-sixty-degree feedback is now commonplace and, indeed, one of the efficiencies and ethics driving innovations in human resources management. Additionally, my resolve to do this is strengthened by my knowledge of the man I intend to assess. He would not mind this at all, as he would laugh off any mischief I make in the process and take any accolades in his stride. So, here goes.
Professor Felix Ebhodaghe Okieimen, a professor of chemistry turned 70 years on 14th June 2023. He, therefore, has attained the statutory retirement age in the ivory tower and dropped the proverbial chalk after a life lived teaching and shaping lives across the Nigeria academic firmament using the University of Benin as his base. He is handsome. He is healthy. He is leaving with his integrity intact and his records of achievement long as the second Niger Bridge. His family is a source of inspiration to many. He was still teaching till 13th June and will probably not allow retirement to stop the pleasurable life hobby that teaching has become for him. So, there are enough reasons to celebrate the man.
Happy birthday to the academic giant, the man whose brilliance and erudition can be documented in a book of several chapters, whose integrity among students, academic colleagues and anyone he has come into contact with, is exemplary. A Professor of professors of whom we are all sure what he professes! Many happy returns of the day Sir!
Born to Iruekpen, Edo State, parents who spent most of their lives at Uhonmora in Owan Area of Edo State, it was not surprising that this son of a Headmaster eventually chose teaching as his profession. He attended University of Benin where he was a pioneer student. Graduating top of his class and among the very best of the first graduating set, he did not waste time before heading to University of Cardiff in Wales where he was one of the youngest graduating PhDs. He returned home immediately to continue a teaching role in his former university.
That was where our paths crossed. Not long after he returned home to Uniben, I finished secondary school that same 1980 and got admitted into the same university to read Biochemistry. I met him during registration and, strangely, he took a liking to me from there and became my academic and life coach. At the 500 Lecture Theatre, the young, denim jeans-wearing light-skinned young lecturer made chemistry seem like a stroll in the park! The impression was electric. For young men like me. And for young ladies too, as you might have expected! Forget the razzmatazz, the man was a pure academic and he made you feel ashamed if you let yourself down by scoring low in his tests or exams. He does not need to tell you not to let it happen again before you make the promise yourself!
That 500 Lecture Theatre was a melting pot of sorts. The place where every science, engineering, medical sciences and pharmacy took the same courses in year one or pre-degree then glamorously called PD! It is that lecture theatre that should be blamed for the burgeoning numbers and spread of the Professor’s admirers and students, achievers and professionals across the world today. Thousands of students who attribute their success and life trajectory, like mine, to the dedicated efforts of this great teacher who knows nothing about the use of ethnicity, religion, crude politics to advance their frontiers, are celebrating his attainment of six scores and ten. He has beaten Nigeria’s life expectancy which is about 55 years by 15 years already. He looks set for another 30 with complete eyesight and full dentition!
Professor Okieimen, is unarguably, the most prolific academic that Uniben has produced as its alumnus and he is also the most productive academic to have had the privilege of teaching and research therein. You can use any measure and the man stands tall. I will not use the phrase ‘above all’ as he would frown at that. But I would love anyone to challenge me if there is anyone else who has supervised and produced as many PhDs and Masters Degree holders in that our revered university since its inception! Even by publications in reputable journals across the world. He has many books he authored and even established and edited a Journal of Chemistry. He was the youngest DVC ever in Uniben and was picked purely on merit without his asking.
A man with so much output in academia could have been thought of, as many are wont to do, as an armchair chemist satisfied to pontificate on theories on the University Campus where he holds sway. No. Not Professor Okieimen. He took his craft, at some stage, to practice what he preaches at Shell, the epitome of industrial chemistry practice and left giant footprints there in a very rewarding and pace-setting sabbatical. His former students bestride various industries across Nigeria – Chemical industries, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, banks, breweries, medicine, teaching, research centres, government agencies, government, finance. Even the armed forces. They are to be found in several countries across the world. Only Uniben can tell why they call him today the best Vice Chancellor they never had.
I would like to use two examples to buttress my assertion of the innate goodness of this man. Despite that fact that he did not know me before my admission and considering that I was in a different department, the Professor took great interest in my progress. First he wanted me to transfer from Biochemistry to a certain professional course purely on the bases of my outstanding Division One school certificate result. He got the dean to agree only for me to turn it down because, in my naïve thinking, six years was a bridge too far considering my meagre financial support. Little did I know he was going to be supporting me with life and studies-enhancing meal tickets later on.
The Professor opened his home to me. That was how I started spending some holidays at his No. 4, Utekon Avenue home somewhere off Oba Eweka Street. It was my first opportunity of sleeping in a house in the place they called GRA! And I used the telephone there for the first time in my life. This man was making me a big boy…. That was where I first saw a coffee maker but avoided its use so as not to over-expose my provincial credentials.
It was through his address I routed my job search responses because I knew no other reliable one after graduation and youth service. My 19-year career in Guinness would probably have been short-circuited had all the letters inviting me to the various assessment exams and interviews not passed through his mailbag. He it was, who in 1996, chaired my traditional marriage ceremony in faraway Igarra. You needed to see him dance to the sonorous music my Somorika in-laws put on show. Then, he printed all five hundred copies of my wedding programme free of charge. It is instructive that it was during that traditional marriage that he met my parents for the first time!
I also know of a student of his to who Prof. always gave holiday research work so as to prevent him from going to the village where his siblings were dying mysteriously one after the other. The young man was assisted to go for a Master’s program and graduate assistantship in the US where his PhD dissertation attracted the cream of the City Council where the University is located and his achievement was published in local newspapers. Following this, his research on inks, this former Okieimen student mentee got headhunted by Hewlett Packard (HP) the world-renowned maker of printers and printing inks. He began to move around the world. His life has been changed for good by the Okieimen touch. I leave him unnamed because I have not asked his permission to make this public before writing this night.
Prof., as his students fondly call him, extended his goodness to others to his family at home. It is not for nothing that his wife, a former student, moved gradually from just Mrs. Charity Okieimen to Professor (Mrs.) Charity Okieimen, Professor of Chemical Engineering. Today, one of his daughters lectures in architecture. For Professor Okieimen, charity indeed begins at home.
I know Professor Okieimen’s former students and admirers around the globe, or at least those who are aware of today’s retirement and birthday, are planning a massive event, at no cost to the celebrant, at a later date. The programme would be innovative, and it will raise the standard of how to celebrate an achiever whose life has been of service to many. A great man who has brought light into the darkness of ignorance and despair that otherwise would have been the lot of many. A man who made it possible for a student to know timely, what to do so that his imminent 2nd Upper can turn around with a bit more focused effort, into a first class. A professor who is at home with the young, the elderly, Christian, Muslim, atheist-agnostic and even the traditionalist and treats them with equal respect.
Was this Professor a saint? Does he pass himself off as a saint? For from it. He has his own human foibles like everyone else. But what is a 0.05 percent in a life of worthy 99.95 percent? He is a disciplinarian to the core. You would not like him when he is angry. He can be impatient with a perpetual laggard. The English language he deploys to tell a fool to go to hell can sound so sweet that the buffoon happily looks forward to the journey!
He deserves all the accolades as he retires on his 70th birthday. We will celebrate him today. We will celebrate him next Saturday. Do not ask me when the celebrations will stop. They never will. We will rather continue to do it than wait to give a graveside oration that he would not hear.
