About the Department

The University began operation at the former Campus of the Nigeria College of Arts, Science and Technology, Ibadan, in October 1962 with five Faculties, namely, Agriculture, Arts, Economics and Social Sciences (Now Social Sciences), Law and Science.

The Departments of Botany and Zoology that made up of Biological Sciences Section of the Faculty of Science moved (along with the Faculty of Agriculture) to Ile-Ife in January 1968.

These two Departments were later merged and expanded to make the Department of Biological Sciences with programmes in Botany, Biochemistry, Zoology and Microbiology.  They were all housed in the Agriculture buildings until, the Biological Sciences buildings were completed at the beginning of the 1974/75 session.  The different programmes were upgraded into full-fledged Departments as they moved into the new buildings in 1975 and they remained so till today.  Thus the Department of Botany, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife came into being for the second time and has graduated a large number of students at the B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D levels since then.

All the members of academic staff, at one stage or the other were trained in the Department.  The above is as a result of the training/development programmes and mentorship policy of the Department.  Many of the graduates of this Department are already Professors in Universities all over Nigeria and outside Nigeria in training/developing other people in their special area.

The Department carries out periodic reviews of its Curriculum in line with the National Universities Commission guidelines, which is in response to the needs of Nigeria as a nation as well as the outside world to be in consonance with the 21^st Century so that the graduates we produce would be employable and can also employ themselves.