Samuel Manuwa

Samuel Manuwa was a Nigerian surgeon and public health administrator, born in 1903 and dead in 1976. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, graduated in medicine and chemistry in 1926, won every prize available at the medical school and earned his MD in 1934; he was the first Nigerian to pass the FRCS. He returned to Nigeria in 1927, joined the colonial medical service and practised surgery for more than eighteen years, inventing an excision knife for tropical ulcers. He became the first Nigerian director of medical services in 1951, then Inspector General of Medical Services and Chief Medical Adviser to the federal government, and worked for the creation of University College Hospital, Ibadan, the first medical school in Nigeria. He was elected president of the World Federation for Mental Health in 1966.