David Okpako, who has died aged 83, was a distinguished pharmacologist in Nigeria, with strong links to the UK academic community. He helped to place the study of pharmacy on a sure footing both at the University of Ibadan, where he became dean of the department, and at Delta State University, Abraka, as well as in South Africa at the University of Western Cape, as a visiting professor in the 1990s.
He was the author of five books, including Principles of Pharmacology – A Tropical Approach (1991) and Science Interrogating Belief – Bridging the Old and New Traditions of Medicine in Africa (2015). In the latter he boldly challenged European pharmacology, stressing the need for it to “be tempered by the injection of indigenous experience”.
Well versed in European culture, David focused in his later writing on Uhrobo culture and traditional African medicine. “The educated African elite,” he wrote, “has a duty to reverse the European perversion of our cultural history.”
David was born in Owahwa, Delta State, Nigeria; his father, Kokpako, was a farmer, fisherman and miller; his mother, Obien, a farmer. His education was at a one-teacher primary school in his village and then at secondary school in Port Harcourt and at Urhobo college in Effurun. Although the college’s library was just one shelf in a mud-walled room, he read David Copperfield there (the shelf had no books by African writers).
He studied to become a qualified pharmacist at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology in Ibadan (1956-60), and then won a scholarship to study in the UK at Bradford University. There he put on a production of Wole Soyinka’s play The Trials of Brother Jero, met his future wife, Kathleen Williams, whom he married in 1967, and obtained a PhD in pharmacology the same year.
Following a fellowship at University College London, he returned to Nigeria during the civil war and became a lecturer in pharmacology at the University of Ibadan in 1969, becoming professor in 1977 and dean of pharmacy in 1987. After retiring from Ibadan in 1991, he continued to work at different universities, including at the University of Western Cape, South Africa, where he was instrumental in developing the postgraduate curriculum in pharmacology.
He was twice a visiting fellow at Cambridge University (Corpus Christi College, 1983-84, and Fitzwilliam College, 1997-98). His many friends, of whom I was one, will treasure memories of his erudition, his golf skills, his patience, good humour and his deep infectious laugh.
David is survived by Kathleen, their children, Branwen and Edore, and their grandchildren, Ilan, Xaver and Taiga.
