The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) has described as a misnomer, the branding of a university after a single professional in a multidisciplinary sector, and discriminatory.

Speaking ahead of the society’s 2025 Annual National Conference(DABO 2025) scheduled to be held in Kano next month, the PSN President, Prof. Ayuba Tanko, who frowned at the development said “by singling out medicine in the naming of a new health-sector University, other health professions are inadvertently relegated to a subordinate or surrogate status.”

This, he argued, “can be psychologically damaging, and could cause feelings of inferiority that affect students from their training days through their professional lives.’’
This practice Tanko further posited, ‘’violates Sections 42(A) and (B) of the 1999 Constitution, which prohibit discrimination against Nigerian citizens based on their gender, religion, or social and cultural affiliations.
‘’In Nigeria, a citizen’s social status significantly influences their benefits, privileges, and overall reward system,’’ he said.

He faulted the preponderance to place medicine very well above other health sciences, saying it was detrimental to the overall objective healthcare delivery system.
According to him, although “it is a well-established fact that medicine is a health science, but as a health science, medicine consists of a biological basis, clinical applications, evidence-based practice, and an interdisciplinary approach. Overall, medicine is a vital component of the health sciences, and not all about what it stands in healthcare delivery.”

He cited Nigeria’s first health-focused University, aptly named the University of Health Sciences, Makurdi, Benue State as an all-inclusive nomenclature for such institutions.
Tanko identified the establishment of the first, “University of Medical Sciences in the country by former Ondo State Governor Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, a physician, as the beginning of what has become the fad in University development among States Governors in the country.”

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