Professor Dayo Alao, Adeleke University Ex VC is dead.

 Professor Dayo Alao, dies after a brief illness. 

 Prof. Dayo Alao, Professor of Mass Communication has the uniqueness of being a journalist who reached the peak in media hierarchy as acting chairman/CEO of the iconic Daily Times newspaper and also reached the peak in academia as a Vice-Chancellor. He is part of trail blazing journalists/media practitioners turned academics who are making waves in the Ivory Towers – Prof. Femi Onabajo, former Vice-Chancellor, Lead City University, Ibadan, a former NTA broadcaster, Prof. Adigun Agbaje, former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Ibadan, who cut his journalistic teeth at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and Prof. Innocent Okoye, HOD, Mass Communication Department, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, a former newspaper editor. Prof. Alao was among the foundation members of an organization serving as a bridge between media academics and media practitioners – The Association of Communication Scholars and Practitioners of Nigeria (ACSPN) which has Prof. Lai Oso, another former journalist of the News Agency of Nigeria, as president.

Prof. Alao started out as a reporter with the Daily Times in the mid 1970s at a time when the Doyen of Journalism in Nigeria, Alhaji Babatunde Jose, was experimenting with recruiting university graduates into journalism, a field that had been dominated by those with secondary school education or less. Among the graduate pioneers were Prince Tony Momoh, who later became Minister of Information, Idowu Sobowale, later Prof. Sobowale, Dr. Doyin Aboaba, Dr Hezy Idowu and Mr. Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, the celebrated master of stylistic writing. Prof. Alao who joined Daily Times with a Bachelors degree in religious studies from the relatively unknown Adventist College of West Africa in Ilishan-Remo, Ogun state, was apparently intimidated by this array of swaggering stars and felt he also deserves to swagger. So, off he went to the United States.

He studied with a vengeance earning a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, two master’s degrees – in Mass Communication and Political Science and two PhD degrees also in Mass Communication and Political Science.

With such formidable academic armament, it was no surprise that on his rejoining the Daily Times, he had a meteoric rise, culminating in his chairmanship of the organization, in acting capacity. Prof. Alao hails from Oke-Oyi in Ilorin East LGA of Kwara state and Kwara people are perceived more as traders, but this is one of those Kwarans who don’t follow the trodden path. He had mapped out a post-media career in academia, hence while in the Daily Times he had been part-time Lecturer at the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos and the Times Journalism Institute, in Iganmu, Lagos. So, when in the early 2000s he joined Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, it was a smooth transition and a home coming of sort. It was the old Adventist College, his alma mater that has transformed to Babcock University.