Pen Resource University Names Chemistry Prof, John Igoli As Founding Vice Chancellor
The Oasis Reporters
May 18, 2022
Professor John Ogbaji Igoli, VC, Pen Resource University, Gombe.
Pen Resource University, a private university in Gombe, Nigeria’s North East has named Nigerian born but UK based Professor of Chemistry, John Ogbaji Igoli as its founding Vice-Chancellor.
This was contained in an e-mail forwarded to The Oasis Reporters from the office of Dr Sani Jauro, Pro-chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council of the newly established University in Gombe.
Prof. Igoli who studied Chemistry at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka finishing as the best graduating student in his class of ‘85 would resume to pilot the affairs of the latest addition to the numbers of private universities in Nigeria, while becoming the second one thus far in the North East, after the Atiku Abubakar American University in neighboring Adamawa State’s capital city of Yola.
Igoli had obtained an M.Sc (1990) and PhD in organic chemistry specializing in natural products in 2003, winning the Vice-Chancellor’s prize for the best Ph.D. thesis in his Faculty.
He had a six-year postdoctoral training at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK where he learnt spectroscopy and structure elucidation of organic compounds.
Until his appointment, he was the Director of the Specialized Equipment Centre, Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University (Formerly Federal University of Agriculture), Makurdi.
His expertise is in the area of phytochemistry, ethnobotany and natural products isolation from plants, propolis and microbial sources.
He is also involved in bioactivity studies against Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) such as malaria, trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis.
Professor John Ogbaji Igoli has over 150 publications centred on ethnopharmacology, phytochemistry and structural elucidation of novel bioactive compounds. He is avidly involved in training and mentoring young scientists in phytochemical studies, the spectroscopic identification of compounds and the evaluation of plants used in traditional medicine.
He has obtained fellowships, research and travel grants from DAAD/OPCW, IFS, NHS, RSC, CRUK, IFAH, CADFP and the Wellcome Trust.
Presently, he is an Honorary Research Fellow with the University of Glasgow, UK, and currently the editor of two special journal editions of Frontiers in Pharmacology and an Associate editor for Heliyon.
The founding Vice Chancellor is a member of the Federal Government of Nigeria’s expert committee on the evaluation and registration of herbal remedies against Covid-19.
His publications are well cited with a ResearchGate Score of 32.15 and on Google Scholar with a h-index of 21 and i10-index of 43.
Listed among the Top 500 authors, by Scholarly Output in Nigeria over the period 2018 to 2021 by SciVal, it is believed that Prof. Igoli’s wealth of experience in research and administration coupled with his extensive international collaborations will set the tone and put the Pen Resource University, Gombe on an enviable path of research and academic excellence to achieve the aims and objectives of setting up the University.
The University will further set up the Centre for African Plant Research (CAPRE) under his leadership, which is aimed at the production of drugs from our local resources. The appointment takes immediate effect.
