Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello: The Woman Who Transformed LASU

Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello left office this month as the ninth substantive Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University (LASU), closing a five-year tenure that began in September 2021. A physiologist by training, she ran the university with the same precision she once applied to a laboratory bench.

According to reports, she inherited 37 academic programmes awaiting accreditation and secured full accreditation for 31 within her first year. By the end of her term, all of LASU’s 80 to 81 programmes had reportedly achieved full accreditation, alongside three new faculties, two new schools and 20 additional courses.

That expansion pulled in applicants. Annual intake rose from roughly 5,000 students to 13,000, and LASU became Nigeria’s most applied-to university in both 2025 and 2026, drawing more than 85,000 applications in a system where admission slots remain fiercely contested.

She pushed the university online too, digitalising admissions, screening and certificate verification, and in July 2022 introduced Nigeria’s first university Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy, a framework that predated the current national conversation around AI governance in education by several years.

More than 50 infrastructure projects went up during her tenure. The Babajide Sanwo-Olu Library Complex, a six-storey Academic Resource Centre, the multi-billion-naira Tunji Bello Auditorium in Epe and new hostels housing roughly 8,000 students converted LASU into something closer to a residential campus.

The rankings followed. LASU topped the UI GreenMetric list as Best University in West Africa for four straight years and was ranked the second-best public university in Sub-Saharan Africa by Times Higher Education in 2024.

Pro-Chancellor Babatunde Ogala called her, at her valedictory session, a go-getter and a teacher of teachers. Her own summary was simpler: offices and titles are temporary, she said, but institutional impact endures beyond tenure.

LASU’s next Vice-Chancellor inherits a university considerably harder to run into the ground than the one she found in 2021.