GLIT FOCUS
Some lives will be filed beneath a single heading: a career, a title, one defining achievement. Dr Tunji Olowolafe resists the train. He skilled as a doctor, left scientific drugs in 1988 for enterprise, and 4 a long time on, he has emerged as an investor, establishment builder, training advocate, and philanthropist. Much of the work that claims most about him occurs away from the cameras. Today, as Chancellor of Ekiti State University and a driving power behind a spread of serious nationwide initiatives, his story has moved past private success to the extra enduring enterprise of giving again to humanity. Raheem Akingboluwrites.
The first departure was the boldest. Medicine supplied a settled path and he took one other, constructing Deux Project Limited into a gaggle spanning infrastructure, building, engineering, consultancy and funding. He needed to be taught unfamiliar industries from the bottom up and earn credibility in rooms the place a medical diploma counted for little. The choice was much less a rejection of his coaching than an acceptance of a unique problem, one that will finally take him into a number of the nation’s most demanding infrastructure and enterprise conversations.
His personal account of that journey reveals the dimensions of the leap. Reflecting on the breadth of roles he has taken on, he mentioned: “Over the last 40 years, I have functioned as a civil engineer, design architect, biomedical engineer, even as a marine specialist. There is a caveat: without any formal qualification in any of them.” It is a telling admission from a person whose profession has repeatedly required him to enter unfamiliar territory, discover the appropriate individuals and construct one thing that works.
A traditional instance, he recalled, was the Lekki-Epe Expressway in 2008, when he turned chairman of Lekki Concession Company. “I was not a civil engineer and had never built a road. We brought the right people, expertise and capital to build an asset that had never been done before.” The expertise was instructive. It demonstrated that constructing establishments will not be all the time about possessing each technical talent oneself, however about recognising competence, assembling it and creating the circumstances during which it could actually ship.
His enterprise profession introduced different high-profile chapters. His affiliation with the Lekki Concession Company positioned him inside one in every of Nigeria’s carefully watched infrastructure tales, whereas his involvement in GZ Industries took him into manufacturing. Board seats and investments throughout sectors adopted. Through all of it, a doctor’s behavior remained helpful: perceive the issue, take into account its penalties and search for a sensible treatment.
That expertise seems to have strengthened a philosophy that now runs by way of a lot of his work. “Nigeria has talent and capacity to build world-class institutions,” is the conviction attributed to him, and it helps clarify why his curiosity has more and more shifted from what he can accomplish personally to what establishments could make attainable for others. It is a refined however vital distinction, as a result of establishments outlive particular person achievements.
The COVID-19 disaster in Ekiti State confirmed that intuition at work. In 2020, he served on the state’s Medical Logistics and Project Nomination Committee and supported efforts to strengthen healthcare infrastructure and diagnostic capability. The Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory at Ekiti State Teaching Hospital was among the many initiatives related to that interval, bringing extra refined testing capability nearer to individuals who wanted it.
Medicine has since discovered its method again into his story, in a unique kind. In 2026, the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria conferred on him an Honorary Fellowship. The man who left the consulting room a long time in the past was being recognised by the career in a brand new chapter of a journey that had carried him far past scientific apply. His profession, by then, had develop into an argument for what can occur when experience is mixed with curiosity and the willingness to be taught.
Education has develop into one other defining chapter. As Chancellor of Ekiti State University, he has pushed the establishment in the direction of higher digital proficiency, sensible publicity and stronger hyperlinks between tutorial studying and the world of labor. By 2026, the college was pursuing Project Digi-Teach for its 650 lecturers, whereas the Foundation had sponsored 37 lecturers to worldwide conferences since 2024.
For college students, a few of these adjustments are extra tangible. EKSU’s accreditation on Springpod, a London-based careers platform, offers college students and graduates entry to digital work experiences with international corporations together with Amazon, Barclays, Deloitte and Rolls-Royce. The worth will not be merely in including one other line to a CV. It is in permitting a youngster in Ado-Ekiti to see skilled prospects past the rapid geography of the campus.
MIVA Open University carries the identical considering into one other a part of the training panorama. As its Pro-Chancellor, Olowolafe has argued that open and distance studying can cut back the geographical, financial and logistical obstacles that preserve many Nigerians away from college. At his investiture because the establishment’s first Pro-Vice-Chancellor, he acknowledged the load of the project in phrases that had been each easy and revealing: “As the first Pro Vice-Chancellor, MIVA Open University, I find myself standing before you with a weight of responsibility that is quite sober. I accept this responsibility with full heart.”
The phrases are placing as a result of they reveal one thing beneath the general public picture of the builder and businessman: an consciousness that establishments are finally about accountability. The cash matches the argument. The Gbemisola Olowolafe MIVA Scholarship commits 1 billion over 5 years to assist 1,000 college students at MIVA Open University. Each place represents a youngster whose tutorial journey might have been delayed or deserted due to monetary circumstances. Here, philanthropy is expressed much less as a gesture than as an try to change the path of particular person lives. The most telling work, nevertheless, is nearer to house, in Are-Ekiti. The Tunji Olowolafe Foundation has constructed an academic chain there that runs from secondary training to digital expertise and tertiary alternatives. The Gbemisola Olowolafe Memorial Community Secondary School and GOMTECH give kids entry to amenities, data and prospects which might be too usually concentrated in bigger cities. The Foundation presently stories greater than 125 college students at GOMCSS.
The response from these across the initiatives is revealing. At a latest geoscience career-awareness outreach at GOMCSS, EKSU college students launched JSS1 pupils to geology and wider geoscience careers. Prof. Adeyinka Oluyemi Aturamu, who participated as a speaker, described it as a privilege and thanked the Foundation for supporting the initiative. EKSU scholar Boluwatife Osasona, who introduced to the pupils, mentioned it was an honour and seemed ahead to extra alternatives to encourage younger minds.
Olowolafe has usually expressed the idea that the place a baby is born shouldn’t decide what that little one can be taught. GOMTECH places that conviction into bodily kind. The 40-seat, solar-powered and linked hub provides coaching starting from digital literacy to synthetic intelligence, coding, information analytics and cybersecurity. The Foundation describes it as a mannequin supposed for wider replication, with its sights set effectively past the rapid group.
For Ekiti, that makes him greater than a profitable son of the soil. He is among the state’s notable fashionable benefactors, an incredible indigene whose connection to house has moved past sentiment into funding in individuals. In Are-Ekiti, the space between a rural group and the worldwide digital financial system is measured not solely in kilometres, however in entry, publicity and alternative.
His late spouse, Gbemisola Olowolafe, runs quietly by way of a lot of this work. Her title is connected to the group secondary faculty, the digital centre and the Gbemisola Olowolafe Centre for Ophthalmic Simulation on the Guinness Eye Centre, LUTH. The memorials have due to this fact been conceived as working establishments, locations the place remembrance is transformed into one thing helpful to a different technology.
The ophthalmic simulation centre, commissioned in July 2026, brings the story virtually again to its starting. It offers eye surgeons entry to superior simulation coaching earlier than they carry out delicate procedures on sufferers. The first trainees accomplished the programme and obtained certificates on the commissioning. For a former physician who left scientific drugs greater than 4 a long time in the past, it’s an unexpectedly becoming chapter. Seen collectively, the items kind a recognisable sample. Medicine got here first, adopted by infrastructure and enterprise, after which by training, digital entry, scholarships and medical coaching. The street was by no means straight. What offers it coherence is the gradual motion from private achievement in the direction of institutional affect, with every chapter creating room for different individuals to advance.
Underneath all of it is a plain set of values. Olowolafe says his grandmother taught him three: onerous work, humility and honesty. She handed them on within the Ekiti dialect by way of songs and tales, and he later carried the identical message to graduating college students at EKSU. Those three phrases have develop into a recurring thread in his public reflections on management, training and accountability.
Away from boardrooms and ceremonies, he maintains an curiosity in long-distance operating, studying and self-development. Running rewards pacing and self-discipline greater than a quick begin. There is an analogous high quality in his skilled journey, which has been marked much less by one dramatic leap than by the power to maintain transferring, altering path when needed and remaining engaged with the following problem.
Those who profit are more and more the higher witnesses. A scholar discovering a digital talent, a lecturer getting back from a world convention, a pupil encountering geoscience for the primary time, a first-class graduate receiving recognition, or a medical trainee mastering a fragile process on a simulator all symbolize completely different expressions of the identical concept: that success acquires higher which means when it creates room for another person to maneuver ahead.
Buildinºgs climate, corporations change arms and titles move on. What a scholar learns, or a surgeon masters, travels additional than the one who created the chance can observe. Olowolafe’s story has moved from treating sufferers to constructing companies, then establishments, and now alternatives for individuals he could by no means meet. In that development lies the quiet measure of a life more and more outlined not by what it has acquired, however by what it has made attainable for others.
