Professor Odekunle, Nigeria’s first professor of criminology, died at the COVID-19 isolation center in Gwagalada, Abuja, on Tuesday evening.
At the briefing of the presidential task force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, secretary to the govt of the federation, had said: “A good friend of this government just passed on at 6:30pm”.
It is unclear if Mustapha was pertaining to Odekunle or another person but he said discussions were ongoing to assist the deceased hours before news of his death broke.
Nigeria is currently experiencing the second wave of the pandemic.
Mustapha had earlier said within one week since Nigeria entered the second wave of infections, 16 out of each 100 tests returned positive.
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Within the past fortnight , the daily count of COVID-19 cases recorded a big rise — increasing to quite 1,000 cases within a 24-hour period.
In July, Odekunle made the headlines when he kicked against the arrest of Ibrahim Magu, former acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
He had described Magu’s ordeal as an influence play by blocs within the corridor of power.
Odekunle had alleged that Abubakar Malami, minister of justice, is that the arrowhead of the bloc that’s not really curious about President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption fight.
A graduate of the University of Ibadan, 1968, he got his PhD in sociology and social psychiatry from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, within the us , in 1974.
Odekunle lectured in several universities but spent years at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna state.
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