University of Ibadan - History

History

The origins of the University are in Yaba College, founded in 1932 in Yaba, Lagos as the first tertiary educational institute in Nigeria. Yaba College was transferred to Ibadan, becoming the University College of Ibadan, in 1948. The University was founded on its own site on 17 November 1948. The site of the University was leased to the colonial authorities by Ibadan native chiefs for 999 years. The first students began courses in January of that year. Arthur Creech Jones, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, inaugurated the new educational institution. The University was originally instituted as an independent external college of the University of London, then it was called the University College, Ibadan. Some of the original buildings were designed by the English modernist architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. A 500-bed teaching hospital was added in 1957. The University of Ibadan became an independent university in 1962.

In late 1963, on the University playing fields, with the celebration marked by talking drums, the Rt. Hon. Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, first Prime Minister of independent Nigeria, became the first Chancellor of its independent University. The first Nigerian vice chancellor of the university was Kenneth Dike, after whom University of Ibadan's library is named.