Ijeoma Uchegbu, a professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience known for her ground-breaking work in nanoparticle drug delivery, who from 1 October 2024 will become the 7th President of Wolfson College, Cambridge University, said she left Nigeria after her Masters degree as she “hit an infrastructure wall and I realised I had to move away if I want to advance my career”.
Uchegbu, was born in Hackney, London before moving to Nigeria where she studied Pharmacy at the University of Benin, gaining her Masters degree from the University of Lagos.
She spoke to Arise News about the brilliance of many Nigerian scholars that she has worked with and mentored, all presumably having faced the same challenges to advance their careers if they had remained in Nigeria.
I Hit an Infrastructure Wall in Research Advancement in Nigeria – Prof. Uchegbu
After getting my Master's degree in Nigeria I realised that if I was to advance my research I needed to leave Nigeria because of the deficit in research infrastructure
Prof. Ijeoma Uchegbu
7th… pic.twitter.com/07O4pVmVq8— ARISE NEWS (@ARISEtv) December 19, 2023
Her comments highlight how Nigeria is suffering from a chronic brain drain from which it may never recover, and such a malaise guarantees the country will remain underdeveloped for the foreseeable future. We have previously outlined how investment in research is critical for the country’s development: Serious investment in R&D – including facilitating closer links between industry and universities, supporting the commercialisation of research (the transition of successful research ideas to the market).
8 things Nigeria must do in order to develop (and not doing or likely to do)
Regrettably, no single government, at state of federal level, in recent times has even made a feeble attempt to reverse the slide that has seen the likes of Professor Uchegbu seek to advance their careers abroad.
Wolfson College was “delighted” to have Uchegbu at Nigeria’s expense, after the investment Nigeria made in educating her at the Universities of Benin and Lagos. This was clear from their press release announcing her elevation to president.
Professor Uchegbu is currently Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience at University College London. Her pioneering work on the mechanisms of drug transport have led to the development of new treatments which promise to transform pain relief, including the enkephalin pain medicine candidate (EnveltaÔ), designed to address the opioid crisis.
Her work has won her numerous awards, fellowships and accolades, and she holds positions on several academic boards and councils including the Wellcome Trust, the Academy of Medical Sciences and is an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She has also played a leading role during her time at UCL as Pro Vice Provost for Africa and the Middle East, in forging new research partnerships in those regions and as UCL’s Provost’s Envoy for Race Equality, steering the organisation’s race equality agenda.
