Dr Abiodun Gabriel Adeniyi has been promoted to the exalted office of Professor of Mass Communications at Baze University, Abuja.
His promotion along with five others was announced by the university in a statement in Abuja.
According to the statement, the promotions followed rigorous internal and external assessments.
It said the process of assessment of the professors had begun months ago, through the usual stages of internal review by their respective faculties, and the University’s Appointment and Promotions Committee, to confirm eligibility. It was followed by external assessments by three different subject matter experts, drawn from a list of six assessors across the global academic community.
Born of Ogidi parentage in 1965, Adeniyi was educated at the St. Mary’s Primary School, Lokoja; Government Secondary School, Agbaja; the School of Basic Studies, Kwara State College of Technology (Now Kwara Polytechnic); and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he left with a Second Class Upper Honors Degree from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) (as it then was).
He began his journalism career with Today Newspaper in Kaduna before moving to The Guardian in 1991.
He was deployed to the paper’s Abuja Bureau, where he covered key political beats including the electoral commission and the Senate.
He covered the many transition programmes of former military president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd), and that of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (rtd), who eventually restored Nigeria to constitutional democracy.
The Guardian experience offered him the regular reportorial contact and closeness, with several political dignitaries including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former President Ibrahim Babangida, and many past and present political office holders, governors, federal legislators and party administrators. Some of these contacts have graduated into a near lifelong relationship.
Adeniyi was amongst 35 young Nigerians, out of over 10,000 applicants, who won the 2002/2003 British Chevening Scholarship for Master’s Degree place in Universities in England.
He completed his MA programme in International Communications at the University of Leeds with credits, and began his Ph.D. research in the same department, following an earlier evaluation of the prospects of his Masters research as a highly conceptual subject matter worthy of further investigation. He was a beneficiary of the Institute of Communications Studies (ICS) funding, for the conclusion of the study.
The researcher was awarded a Ph.D. in Communication Studies for his work on “Internet and Diasporic Communication: Dispersed Nigerians and the Online Mediation of Distance, Longing and Belonging”.
The study examined the communication potentials of migrant Nigerians, the possibility or lack of it, for the construction and reconstruction of identity, and the chances for the evocation of nationalism, besides their transnational connections while online.
The project became one of the few Nigerian and African centered thesis published by Whiterose Etheses Online-a network of the trinity of the University of Leeds, Sheffield and York.
As a Ph.D. student, he was one of few black students provided with teaching opportunities at the same department; an experience that saw him teaching post graduate students from Asia, the America, Africa and from other European countries.
Despite a few post-doctoral research scholarship offers in hand after the doctoral studies, Adeniyi chose to return home in 2009, in deference to the invitation of the late President Umar Musa Yar’adua.
He then resumed as a Communications Consultant on the platform of the World Bank Economic Reform and Governance Project (ERGP) at the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), The Presidency, Abuja.
He later continued as Lead Consultant, Witswords Consults Limited (WCL), a firm of Communications and Knowledge Management after the expiration of the Worldq Bank/Presidency contract.
He has also worked on many projects sponsored by other multilateral agencies like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Brussels based African, Caribbean and Pacific Observatory on Migration (ACPOBS) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) first ever Nigerian diaspora’s link to development study project.
A tempered public speaker, Adeniyi is often also invited as a moderator/compere at some high profile events around Nigerian cities.
The American University of Nigeria, Yola, soon invited him to join its team as a Visiting Professor of Communication and Multi-Media Design. He has also been an external examiner at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).
Still passionate about writing, Adeniyi is a regular contributor to The Boss Newspaper, an online medium lately floated by celebrity journalist, Mr. Dele Momodu, where he is named as Editor-at-Large. He additionally writes frequently for several Nigerian newspapers.
A keen lawn tennis player, Adeniyi is well-travelled. author of the novel, No Tomorrow, a fictional portrayal of Nigeria’s challenges.
The scholar is widely regarded not just as godly person, but also as a gentleman.
A family man, Adeniyi who is passionate about Ogidi, his home town is blessed with children.
Source: Tunde Ipinmisho
