General overseer of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (MFM) Daniel Olukoya has been appointed professor of biotechnology by one of Nigeria’s top universities.
Olukoya, who is the chancellor of Mountain Top University, announced this on Tuesday via social media.
Although he did not reveal the university that made him professor, he said the appointment followed positive consideration by relevant review committees and council of the university after the assessments of his publications by some of the world’s best scholars in biotechnology, each of whom found him to be eminently appointable as such.
Olukoya bagged a first-class honours degree in microbiology from the University of Lagos in 1980. He obtained his doctoral degree (Ph.D) at a record time in molecular genetics from the prestigious University of Reading in the United Kingdom, in 1984. Thereafter, he taught genetics at the University of Lagos and was an external examiner to a number of universities in and outside Nigeria.
He also engaged himself as a researcher and geneticist at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research between 1984 and 1998, during which he produced more than 70 scientific publications in the best local and international journals in the area of microbiology and biotechnology. He has also been cited more than a thousand times by scholars across the world.
Olukoya has supervised many postgraduate students and continues to serve as a mentor and motivator to many Nigerian nicrobiologists and biotechnologists, many of whom have risen to professorial cadres in universities in and outside Nigeria.
The clergyman has been heavily invested in the running of a private biotechnology laboratory for many years.
“The objective of the laboratory is to train university students in molecular genetics and biotechnology, on the basis of the financial inability of most universities to provide such vital laboratories or even provide the manpower that is indispensable to man the teaching and practical handling of the two subjects. This exceptional provision has enabled many students to bridge the gaps that their universities have left unattended to and that would have had very adverse and negative effects on their interests in Biotechnology and Molecular Genetics and their practical grasp of the two subjects.
“It needs to be mentioned that Prof. D. K. Olukoya was severally offered this position in 1990s by many Universities. But, he chose to pursue his ministerial destiny, as directed by God,” the church said.
