The people who built Nigerian healthcare
A profile series honouring the pharmacists, clinicians and founders whose careers shaped how medicine reaches Nigerians. Not obituaries and not press releases. Records of what these people actually built, written while they are still building.
The series so far
Two careers spanning pharmacy leadership, manufacturing, regulation and mentorship.
Pharm. Ahmed Ibrahim Yakasai
FPSN, mni, FNIM, FPCPharm, FNAPharmBorn in Kano in December 1960, he led the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria as President from 2015 to 2018, served as Kano State Commissioner for Commerce, Industry, Cooperatives and Tourism, and founded Pharmaplus Nigeria, Multiplus Consulting and the Safe Medicines Foundation. He trained at Ahmadu Bello University, Fudan University in China, the University of South Africa and the University of Salford, and serves as Honorary Consul-General of Pakistan in Nigeria.
- President, Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, 2015 to 2018
- Founder, Pharmaplus Nigeria Limited and Safe Medicines Foundation
- Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Kano State
- Trustee, Society for Family Health · Board member, NAPPSA
Pharm. Onyeka Onyeibor
B.Pharm (UNN), MSc Drug Design and Development (Bradford), FPSNHe began as a research assistant in pharmacognosy at the University of Nigeria and became, in 1994, the first pharmacist to run a plant as manager at Glamour Pharm. Over thirteen years at Emzor Pharmaceutical Industries he rose to Deputy Managing Director and helped turn a single Nigerian company into a six-company group across West Africa and India. He founded Miral Pharm, now operating in Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and led its 2018 acquisition of the WHO-prequalified Evans Medical assets.
- Managing Director, Evans Baroque Limited
- Founder, Miral Pharm Limited across three West African markets
- Former Deputy Managing Director, Emzor Pharmaceutical Industries
- Chairman, Colina Grace Foundation, funding education for underprivileged students
What makes a trailblazer
We are not interested in job titles. These are the six things we look for when deciding who this series covers.
A company, an institution, a regulation, a foundation. Something that keeps working when the person steps away from it.
The first pharmacist to manage a plant. The first of their kind in a role. Someone had to go first for the path to exist.
Mentorship counts as much as founding. Careers built through someone else's deliberate investment are part of that person's record.
Professional association leadership, public office, foundation work. Time given to the sector rather than extracted from it.
Solutions built for this market, under these constraints, rather than imported and adjusted afterwards.
We profile people while they can read it, correct it and argue with it. Recognition is more useful to the living.
Why we run this series
Three reasons a health platform should spend space on people rather than conditions.
Institutional memory is thin
Nigerian pharmacy and medicine have deep histories that are barely written down. When the people who built these institutions retire, the record of how it was done tends to leave with them.
Young professionals need routes, not slogans
Telling a pharmacy graduate to aim high is useless. Showing them that a research assistant became a plant manager, then a deputy MD, then a founder across three countries is a map.
Recognition is cheap and we give too little of it
The sector is quick to criticise and slow to honour. A profile costs us a week of work and gives someone a permanent, accurate public record of their contribution.
Who have we missed?
This series only works if it reaches beyond the people we already know. If someone in Nigerian or African health has built something, opened a door or trained a generation, tell us about them. Nominate a mentor, a founder, a regulator, a matron, a community pharmacist. You can nominate someone who would never nominate themselves, and most of the best ones will not.
Send their name, what they built, and why it mattered. A paragraph is enough to start.
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Profiles in this series are editorial features compiled from public records, published interviews and information provided by the subject or their representatives. Titles, roles and dates are as reported at the time of publication and may have changed since. HealthCoach Africa is part of the HubCare Global group, and some individuals profiled have professional or historical connections to members of our team, which we note within the relevant article. Inclusion in this series is not an endorsement of any company, product or service associated with the person profiled. To correct or update any detail, contact us.