Dr. Bob Ignatius Agboje Mgbeje

MBBS (Sydney), FRACS (Paediatric Surgery)

Dr Bob Mgbeje, Biochemist and Associate Professor, was born in Ibadan in Oyo State on the 25th of November 1956. He began his education in 1962 when he was enrolled in St Benedict’s Catholic primary school Ogoja in Cross River state. In 1968 he was admitted into the famous Mary Knoll College, Ogoja where he was to spend the next seven years obtaining both the West African school certificate (1972) and the Higher School certificate (1974). After A-levels, he worked as an auxiliary teacher, teaching physics, maths and integrated science, first at his alma mater Mary Knoll college and then at New State High school, Mushin, Lagos. In 1977 he was admitted into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he graduated with a BSc degree in Biochemistry (1981). Thereafter he served the mandatory one-year National Youth Service with the Pharmaceutical chemistry Department of the University of Ife. He also holds an MSc degree from the University of Lagos (1984), a PhD from the University of Southampton, England (1990) all in Biochemistry and a certificate in Management Development Competency from the Business School of Netherlands (2005). After a two-year stint as a Post-doctoral research fellow at Queen Mary and Westfield College, the University of London (1990-92), he elected to come back to Nigeria where he worked extensively, for 17 years, in the Agro-Industry. He was the Production/Quality Manager at the Cross River Estates limited (CREL) and later General Manager at Oban Rubber and Palm Estates Limited (ONREL) before joining PAMOL (Nigeria) Limited, the plantation subsidiary of Dunlop Nigeria PLC, where he served in several executive management positions. He voluntarily retired from the services of PAMOL in March 2009 and returned to academics. He is currently a full-time lecturer in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University of Calabar. His specialty is Molecular biology, industrial biochemistry and Medicinal plant research. Dr Mgbeje is happily married with three grown-up children and grandchildren. In the area of research, his Doctoral and Post-doctoral research was on Molecular Biology and Enzymology of the hemD locus (coding for Uroporphyrinogen III cosynthetase, a heam enzyme) of Escherichia coli K-12. His current research interest is elucidating the active phytochemicals responsible for the antidiabetic properties of validated antidiabetic medicinal plants and profiling the antidiabetic plants (both Chemical and DNA profiling) to ensure proper identification. He is also involved in the evaluation of the mechanism of action of some anti-cancer plants used locally for the treatment of cancer and the production of biofuels from plants, bio-wastes and effluents from bioprocesses. He has so far successfully supervised six MSc students, five Post Graduate Diploma students and co-supervised a PhD student; this is in addition to numerous BSc projects over the years. He has several journal and book chapter publications to his credit and has presented several resource papers in Biochemistry and on the theme of Agriculture, Quality, Raw materials and SMEs. He has also attended a lot of seminars, conferences and management development courses at home and abroad. .