A senior lecturer with Bayero University Kano, Dr.Sulaiman Sadi Ibrahim has won Wellcome Trust Career Development Award.
The scholar,who is of the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences,is an indigene of Getso town, Gwarzo local government area of Kano state.
The award from the Wellcome Trust (a charitable organization located in London, United Kingdom), to the tune of £969,680 (more than half a billion Naira) will allow him (and his research group) to carry out a project, spanning eight (8) years; improve the infrastructural capacity in Nigeria; and support both undergraduates and postgraduate students.
The research grant would further aims to understand how malaria-transmitting mosquitoes adapt to the rising temperatures due to global warming (climate change); the genetic mechanisms they use for such adaptations, and how the mechanisms can be targeted for the control of the mosquitoes, reducing the burden of malaria in the world.
The grant came on the heels of statistics that put Nigeria alone has the highest burden of malaria in the world, accounting for 27% of all global cases, and 31% of all deaths due to malaria.
Sadi Ibrahim described the gesture as “timely against the backdrop of the current protracted industrial strike by the public universities across Nigeria, proving that lecturers in public universities are internationally competitive, contrary to the opinions in some quarters.”
He is the first Nigerian to be awarded the prestigious Wellcome Trust career development award.
He said:”A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work.This once-in-a-life time award to carry out an important piece of research that will target the malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, improving the way they are controlled is good news “
