Author Archives: Seye Abimbola

WHAT WE ARE READING: WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE

Why does female circumcision/genital cutting/mutilation get so much atten­tion and media while nobody seems to care that pos­si­bly the most sen­si­tive part of the penis, the fore­skin, in spite of its impor­tance in sex­ual activ­ity,  is being yanked off rou­tinely in many coun­tries of the world?  It is esti­mated that 30% of the world’s male

On Citizenship in Nigeria

Simon Ade­bola Every nation has laws by which it abides. The con­sti­tu­tion is the basis for the legal sys­tems that exist in each coun­try. Each country’s con­sti­tu­tion is equally bind­ing on all its cit­i­zens and there is nobody that is above the dic­tates of this doc­u­ment. The sov­er­eignty of any nation state is guarded by

Nigerians Talking Science – An IM Conversation

I thought I’d have you lis­ten in on this IM con­ver­sa­tion I had with a friend from med­ical school, Simon Ade­bola, about sci­ence, sci­ence illit­er­acy and bio­med­ical sci­ence in Nigeria/Africa. Simon blogs at iIni­tia­tive. Simon Ade­bola: So tell me, what is new in the neb­u­lous world of cells trans­mit­ters and neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy? Seye Abim­bola: Neb­u­lous world? Simon

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: Why are we surprised?

It is itself a sur­prise to me that we are respond­ing to the issue of the alleged Niger­ian sui­cide bomber/terrorist if it was totally unpre­dictable. We want to con­demn it, we are dis­ap­pointed by what Umar is alleged to have done and the added shame and dis­re­pute that has brought upon Nige­ria, but it would

Alternative Science, Junk Science

I still remem­ber the shock when I realised that the prac­tice of home­opa­thy was funded within the National Health Ser­vice (NHS) in Eng­land. I was tak­ing a lunchtime stroll when I came across the Royal Lon­don Home­o­pathic Hos­pi­tal, which as it turned out was one of the hos­pi­tals within the UCL Hos­pi­tals NHS trust, which

Thinking about Evolution (2)

Here is a response from my per­sonal blog to Think­ing about Evo­lu­tion, writ­ten by Femi Owagbemi, a med­ical doc­tor in Nige­ria. I couldn’t resist post­ing it here. This and other responses from Square One can be found here. Evo­lu­tion is not just a bio­log­i­cal con­cept. It occurs in all facets of life. It is nei­ther

Thinking about Evolution

There is at least one sense in which Nige­ria and the US are very sim­i­lar: hav­ing a remark­ably high pro­por­tion of reli­gious peo­ple – or as the present fad expres­sion goes, peo­ple that “have a per­sonal rela­tion­ship with God” – and of course also hav­ing a high pro­por­tion of cre­ation­ists, which fol­lows, so it seems,

David Morley (1923–2009) and WGH Ilesha

There are many rea­sons for me to blog about David Mor­ley (1923–2009), who per­haps more than any other west­ern sci­en­tist has done more towards the devel­op­ment of pae­di­atrics and child health in Nige­ria, Africa and pos­si­bly the whole devel­op­ing world. His work started at the hos­pi­tal where I was born many years after he worked

Meet Our Contributors — Seye

Seye Abim­bola has an MBChB from the Obafemi Awolowo Uni­ver­sity, (OAU) Ile-Ife, Nige­ria. He edited his med­ical school jour­nal, IFEMED from 2004-06 and he has also been inter­na­tional advi­sor to jour­nals pub­lished by the BMJ Group since 2005. His arti­cles have appeared in IFEMED, stu­dent BMJ, as well as the BMJ. He was awarded the