Nigerian women in neuroscience are pushing past family demands that stall careers, labs that force them to improvise with their own money, and a culture that still assumes a professor or doctor answers the phone with ‘sir.’ Their weapon? Relentless interest in the organ that controls everything and each other.
The human brain is widely considered the ultimate frontier in modern science. Yet, for female neuroscientists navigating the corridors of Nigerian academia and research institutes, unraveling the mysteries of the central nervous system is only half the battle. The other half is surviving a deeply entrenched patriarchal system, severely underfunded laboratories, and the relentless pressure of cultural expectations.
Despite these towering barriers, a vanguard of female researchers is refusing to be sidelined, demanding an equal seat at the table and actively reshaping the future of African science. The scientific arena has long been treated as an exclusive boys’ club, and the cultural blowback for women entering this space is severe.
Handling Wistar rats, navigating late-night laboratory security risks, and fighting deeply entrenched patriarchal stigmas are not standard requirements for studying the human brain. Yet, for female neuroscientists across Nigerian institutions, these hurdles are the daily reality of the job.
Despite severe infrastructural deficits and cultural blowback, a growing vanguard of female researchers are making aggressive inroads into neuroscience. From fabricating their own equipment to tackling the data void in neurodegenerative diseases, these women are demanding equal footing and pioneering critical research.
How we got into neuroscience
The entry point into the field often begins with profound curiosity or sheer chance. For Dr. Lydia Lor, a neuropharmacologist at the University of Jos, the draw was the debilitating nature of brain diseases. When peers actively avoided central nervous system pharmacology because it was deemed too difficult, she deliberately ran toward it.
‘I have always been fascinated by the brain and how it works and how it affects our everyday life cognition, disease, our ability to think, our ability to reason, and then the diseases also that affects our neurons are also a fascination because I know the brain is a very delicate and powerful organ in man, and when you can have other ailments that may as they can cripple you to an extent, but if it affects your brain, it’s more crippling and it can be very dilapidating.
‘The brain is a very powerful organ in the body and everything that concerns it really matters. That’s why I pick interest in neuroscience.’
Dr Zainab Sambo, a human anatomy lecturer at the Federal University of Kashere, admitted to falling into the field by accident after being inspired by a highly intelligent lecturer.
For Dr. Lucy John Africa, a Deputy Director of Research at the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), the entry into the sciences was driven by a fundamental curiosity. She notes that while every field has its hurdles, a deep-seated interest provides the motivation to overcome them.
Similarly, Dr. Susan Ogbe, a physiology lecturer of Federal University, Wukari, traces her journey back to her undergraduate days, sparked by a profound fascination with neurophysiology.
‘From my undergrad days, I had so much interest in neurophysiology, anything that has to do with the brain and all of that.
‘So I wanted to know more, get to develop myself in this field and be an authority in the field. So that was my inspiration and so far so good. The journey has been a pleasant one.
‘Even though it’s not so easy, it’s tasking and it requires a lot of hard work and dedication and perseverance. But it’s something that I have chosen to do.’
Professor Angela Dambrono can still picture the moment neuroscience claimed her. In a state-of-the-art lab at the University of Kansas, thousands of miles from Nigeria on a TETFUND scholarship, she watched nerves and muscles respond under the microscope.
‘The brain controls everything about you,’ she says.
She returned to Bingham University determined to replicate that precision at home. Instead she ran into a different experiment: could a woman actually rise in a field where most senior professors are still men?
These ladies are not alone. Across campuses and research institutes, from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria to the University of Jos to Federal University Kashere in Gombe, the women interviewed told versions of the same story. They entered neuroscience because the brain’s power and fragility hooked them.
Yet every one of them slammed into the same three walls: family expectations that treat science as a hobby once children arrive, cultural assumptions that a serious researcher cannot also be a present mother or wife, and structural gaps that make the work harder for women than for men.
Fighting Patriarchy in the Laboratory
The scientific arena has long been treated as an exclusive boys’ club, and the cultural blowback for women entering this space is severe. Dr. Susan Ogbe points to the profound insult felt by female professionals when societal leaders publicly reduce their value. Recalling a former Nigerian president’s infamous remark relegating his wife to the kitchen and the ‘other room,’
Ogbe emphasises that such cultural gaslighting severely limits societal progress arguing that true development requires a flat, equal institutional playing ground, completely devoid of the assumption that women are the weaker sex.
‘There is this limitation they place on women, especially for the fact that they tell you a woman’s place is in the kitchen or like our former president saying her place is in the other room,’ she noted.
This bias is rarely spoken aloud, but it dictates critical academic decisions. Prof. Angela Dambrono, a neurophysiology professor at Bingham University, notes that male colleagues often default to collaborating with other men, operating under the quiet assumption that female scientists will inevitably abandon their research for childcare. Danborno has felt colleagues hesitate to wake her at night or choose her for grants because ‘after some time she will say she wants to go and take care of her children.’
When collaborations form, male researchers often default to other men. Dr. Lydia Lor, neuropharmacologist at the University of Jos and chairperson of Women in Neuroscience in the university, puts it plainly: the field is still viewed as ‘a world of men,’ where a woman must first prove she is not ‘soft.’
The stigma is even sharper for younger, unmarried researchers. Dr Zainab Sambo, a human anatomy lecturer at the Federal University of Kashere, highlights the intense societal pressure placed on female scientists in Northern Nigeria. She notes that women intensely pursuing science are routinely questioned about their priorities, facing stigmas that suggest they want to know too much or are deliberately dodging marriage.
‘If you are a woman in science and you are passionate about it and you are trying to do a lot in it, people tend to, especially for the women that are not married, they’ll say this is why are you not married.You want to do everything in science and you don’t want to get married. Maybe you are doing too much. You want to know too much. You want to be too big for everybody’.
So those are some of the things that women still face in science. People prioritise maybe culture, marriage and the rest of our education of the girl child’, she said.
Dealing with motherhood
Dr. Lucy John Africa, Deputy Director of Research at the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development, names motherhood as a wall without flinching. ‘As a woman, as an African, you now want to have families. Having children means missed meetings, skipped three-month training, and progress that slows even when the interest never fades.’
Dr. Ogbe calls it the unavoidable drawback of pregnancy, newborn care, and the lingering cultural script that still echoes the place of the woman is in the other room.
‘As a woman, you have quite a lot of responsibilities that is required of you. Homefront responsibilities, you know, apart from the period of pregnancy, you have period that you have to like, nurture your children or your newborn and all of that.
‘So it’s a drawback, yes, for a lot of women in neuroscience. But I believe that where there is a will, there will always be a way to achieving your goal as a woman in neuroscience.’
Shattering deep-rooted misconceptions
A pervasive misconception remains that the rigorous demands of neuroscience – the intense focus, the travel, the complex research – are simply not meant for a woman’s brain. Mojisola Abiodun, a third-year PhD student at Ahmadu Bello University researching Alzheimer’s disease, notes that people still shockingly label neuroscience as a course women should avoid, ‘people still think it is not a woman’s kind of course. I know that is interestingly funny. People still think neuroscience is not a field women should explore.’
The stereotype that scientific authority is inherently male is so ingrained that it influences everyday professional interactions. Prof. Dambrono recounts a recent incident where she was officially addressed over the phone as ‘Sir.’ When she corrected the caller, the response was one of sheer surprise.
The default assumption remains that the title of professor automatically belongs to a man.
Yet, these scientists are using these misconceptions as fuel. When peers actively avoided central nervous system pharmacology because it was deemed too difficult and complex, Dr. Lydia Lor deliberately ran toward it to demystify the field and prove the skeptics wrong.
Rats, resources and midnight Risks
Beyond societal judgment, female scientists face acute infrastructural and practical challenges. Confronted with a total lack of equipment early in her career, Dr. Lor was forced to use personal funds to fabricate the necessary laboratory tools from scratch.
The physical demands of the research also require an intense period of adaptation. Adeze Chukwu, a PhD student at Alex Ekwueme Federal University, initially struggled with the fear of handling live rats and administering toxicity tests. Zainab transitioned from using rats in her undergraduate studies to fruit flies for her Master’s, noting that every biological model comes with distinct operational hurdles.
For Victoria Ngwu, a PhD student who is lecturing at the College of Health Science and Technology in Zaria, the challenges extend to physical safety as she points out that the rigorous demands of laboratory research often require working late into the night, posing severe security risks for women operating in under-protected environments.
Furthermore, the academic pipeline itself is flawed. Mojisola points out a glaring systemic issue: the complete lack of early exposure. Because there are practically no standalone neuroscience departments at the undergraduate level in Nigeria, students are forced into the discipline very late in their academic careers, making it incredibly difficult to find specialized supervisors willing to guide them.
The lifeline of mentorship
To survive these compounding challenges, the consensus among these experts is clear: aggressive mentorship is the ultimate survival strategy. Dr. Ogbe nearly derailed early in her postgraduate studies due to an unsupportive male supervisor, but her career was salvaged when a former female lecturer stepped in to guide her.
Professor Angela’s own mentors were mostly men, but she insists woman-to-woman guidance lands differently. She once told a struggling young mother with small children, ‘I was just like you.’ The reply, according to her, still gives her chills: ‘Prof, if you can make it, I will make it.’
Chukwu credits her mentors with flooding her inbox with links and opportunities that kept her moving when she first feared the rat work in her neuroscience lab. ‘Without me having mentors,’ she says, ‘I don’t think I would have been here.’
Dr. Lydia started with almost none, found them later, and now deliberately builds them for undergraduates and young women who once saw the field as impossible.
‘I had is lack of mentorship. I am coming from a university or from a faculty. I am a pharmacist by profession, and in my faculty, I didn’t have mentors in that area.
I didn’t have people who were really interested in neuropharmacology, so it became a challenge for me because we kind of, when we have mentors in areas, they make our climbing up very easy because we stand on the shoulders of giants to excel in whatever we are doing. The only person that was actually into neuro was somebody who retired the year I came into the system. So there weren’t mentors there for me and it became a big challenge for me at first.’
Mid-career milestones frequently collide with the years women are expected to start families. Dr. Lucy Africa acknowledges that motherhood brings inevitable slowdowns. Yet, she insists these are not career-ending roadblocks, provided women build a strong support system at home and learn to ruthlessly prioritize their time.
The tide is slowly turning as these women force the system to evolve. Professor Dambrono who is the current President of the Neuroscience Society of Nigeria (NSN) is actively pushing the National Universities Commission to establish neuroscience as a foundational undergraduate degree.
At the grassroots level, Zainab is collaborating with her mentor to launch a neuroscience awareness program for young girls in Taraba State to combat the severe lack of regional exposure.
What the next decade will bring for women in neuroscience
The women are clear-eyed about what the next generation will need. Professor Angela lists ICT mastery, data management, and the patience to run experiments that stretch across years. Dr. Susan demands real 50-50 equality, not symbolic inclusion.
In the next five to ten years they want to see their mentees become professors, not tokens but decision-makers at the table. They want laboratories that match their ambition. Most of all they want the next girl who falls in love with the brain to meet fewer walls and more doors.
Dr. Lucy’s advice to young women is characteristically direct: ‘Just run for it.’ Professor Angela’s advice is fiercer: ‘Don’t give up. If you think your supervisor is victimising you because you are a woman, apply to change your supervisor.’ Mojisola, working nights on Alzheimer’s models in Zaria, sums up the quiet defiance they all share: ‘Push yourself.’
The brain, after all, does not ask about gender before it decides to remember, to feel, or to innovate. The women studying it in Nigeria have decided the same. They are not waiting for the field to make space. They are taking it – one fabricated piece of equipment, one late-night experiment, one inspired student at a time.
The mandate for the future is clear. Society must stop steering young girls away from the hard sciences. As Mojisola bluntly summarizes the required mindset for the next generation of female scientists, ‘you need a certain level of stress in your brain to push yourself, so go for it’.