Following the kind gesture from Prince Yemisi Shyllon on 5th December 2025, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, now houses a towering seven-foot bronze statue of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a nationalist whose legacy is inseparable from the university itself. In this statue, Awolowo is depicted wearing a Senior Advocate of Nigeria’s robe and cape. The sculptor’s artistic work has redefined Awolowo’s national posture not only as a political icon but also as a jurist and an intellectual with innovative ideas imperative to modern-day Nigerian development. This 15-foot statue of Awolowo, together with its pedestal, will daily welcome thousands of students, lecturers, and alumni into a life worthy of emulation, service, and exemplary leadership that characterized Awolowo’s life. This statue of Awolowo will undoubtedly serve both as a symbol of aesthetic value and as a source of light: a legacy project that captures the institution’s academic philosophy of “For Learning and Culture”.
Obafemi Awolowo University has a special and proud place within the Nigerian education system. It ranks amongst the most intellectually vibrant institutions in Nigerian higher education circles, and it has always been considered a stalwart of Nigerian education since its 1961 founding as “the University of Ife.” It was founded on the principles of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s visionary development philosophy, particularly in education, as the first Nigerian university without any foreign affiliation. The foremost vision of this remarkable institution of higher learning includes a beautiful blend of academic excellence, cultural awareness, and social responsibility. And since its establishment, it has produced many scholars, professionals, social activists, jurists, artists, and public servants who have had a significant impact on Nigerian development. This esteemed school of higher education has been a paradigm within Nigerian educational institutions, distinguished by very high levels of teaching and intellectual rigor amid robust debate. I attended Ife, obtaining two degrees, BA and PhD, and was later decorated with an honorary D.Litt.
However, Shyllon’s donation of a seven-foot bronze statue of Chief Awolowo to Obafemi Awolowo University is a clear demonstration of his consistent dedication to culture, education, and national heritage. This donation took place at an elegant ceremony on December 5, 2025, during which Prince Yemisi Shyllon, who can well be said to be Africa’s most incredible art collector, philanthropist, lawyer, engineer, and entrepreneur, donated the statue to OAU while himself receiving an Award of Excellence in Creative Arts and Cultural Development for his contributions to academic life.
Shyllon’s contributions to academia and art would be better said to be a tangential issue, given his singular monument to academia. His ideology for philanthropy, which springs out of a conviction “that meaning in life comes from a life of meaning, which in turn comes from helping create meaning for others,” can be found in his own OAU university lectures on achieving through one’s life in a way that counts more than a life of material possessions.
His impact on higher education in Nigeria and on cultural preservation can also be seen in his key role in founding the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art at Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria’s first and only privately funded art museum at a public university to date. The museum was established through his gift of over 1,000 pieces and his financial support. Furthermore, his impact on society and knack for development are not far-fetched, as they are evident in his other institutional donations, such as the titanic bronze statues and cultural contributions, including “Towards Achieving Distinction” at the University of Ibadan, and his establishment of OYASAF: an arts and culture foundation. This recent donation has a significant impact, much deeper than just aesthetic improvements on the Obafemi Awolowo University campus. And its impact only underscores Shyllon’s commitment to “holistic development” by facilitating and promoting arts and culture, as well as leadership values.
The legacy of Chief Awolowo is among the most significant and long-reaching in Nigeria’s sociopolitical and economic history, such that Nigeria’s history is never complete without mention of Awolowo, whose leadership was seen as visionary. His impact on Nigeria’s history went beyond politics to law, society, and education, where he tirelessly advocated that education is the only engine of genuine and universal change. As Nigeria’s first Premier of the Western Region, his provision of free and compulsory primary education remains one of his legacies and standards that totally changed the course of human capital development in Nigeria and have since shaped governments’ approaches to education development and reforms.
The initiative to erect a statue in honour of Awolowo immortalizes, cements, and continues Awolowo’s works and legacy. It is inextricably linked to the university’s founding and sustaining vision. Awolowo will be remembered in the statues’ clothing of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. He will be celebrated not only as a politician but also as a thinker, jurist, and nationalist who spoke and acted on his own vision and ideals of reason and justice. His legacy would be commemorated and celebrated as leadership with purpose and significance, marked by clear, lofty, and enduring goals and ideals, and by a high level of awareness that moves people and institutions to strive for meaning and excellence. This statue is hence an image that showcases and immortalizes his legacy of integrity and service to humanity.
Figuratively, the gift’s symbolic representation can be likened to the “return of the mirror to the source,” meaning that the bronze statue not only stands; it also remembers. It is the bronze in which Awolowo is “cast,” and this renders Awolowo a “still flame”: an unyielding and blazing flame that is instructive and anchored on the very soil that once shaped his intellectual fire. In this regard, Shyllon is a cultural custodian who pours his own fire into a collective heritage through art, thereby engendering a lasting language of gratitude. The artwork is much like the “compass,” located at the heart of the university and, as such, mysteriously orients every new generation of students to the ideals of discipline, integrity, and visionary leadership. The bronze used to cast Awolowo serves as an obstacle to erosion and thus symbolically transcends mere representation of Awolowo’s legacy, embodying the stature of being firm against the passage of time and immune to forgetfulness. Shyllon’s gesture has effectively transcended time, enabling a dialogue between the past and the present. The artwork at the heart of the University campus is an exclamation that awakens remembrance and turns the campus into a living library: the one where history does not sleep but watches, teaches, and endures.
The bronze statue of Awolowo represents the complex, rich, and significance embedded in the naming of the institution after a national icon. It symbolizes the importance of sound scholarship, moral leadership, social justice, and purposeful governance, as personified by Awolowo. The statue is a bulwark of constancy in a dynamic environment, one that was changing quickly. A “monument to time gone by would be adrift in a vast ocean of time.” Representing yesterday’s struggles and triumphs, today’s hopes, and tomorrow’s responsibilities, the statue is more than symbolic. It invests the university’s cultural topography and situates it at the crossroads of art, history, and education.
Thank you, Omoba Yemisi Shyllon.
Toyin Falola, a professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at The University of Texas at Austin, is the Bobapitan of Ibadanland.
