Let me begin with a very brief introduction to the four overlapping areas of my research. A small part of my scholarly work is in Science and Technology Studies, a social science field where I study how microbiology and genomic science gets used in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. But for most of my existence, I am a bacterial geneticist. Our lab studies antimicrobial resistance, to understand how bacteria become resistant to the drugs humans have discovered to eliminate them and how resistance genes spread among different bacteria. We are also interested in diarrhoeal pathogens particularly Escherichia coli that cause infantile diarrhoea, which still kills and impairs numerous young children worldwide, most of them infected in India and Nigeria. Of recent, my molecular epidemiology research has extended to related enteric pathogens like Salmonella, as we try and understand which subtypes contribute the greatest disease burden. My final research focus is on microbial pathogenesis, where I question of how enteric bacteria colonize humans and other intestinal hosts and it is some of the more exciting findings in this area that I have chosen to share with you today.
It is the highest compliment to have been chosen to give this year’s Olumbe Bassir lecture, something that I could not have guessed would ever happen as I sat in the audience at Professor Olusoga Sofola’s 2018 Horatio Oritsejolomi Thomas’ lecture last August. That lecture and this invitation pushed me to take a cursory look at some of the work done by Professors Thomas and Bassir, two incredible pioneers of science in Ibadan. I thank the Foundation for memorializing them in this lecture series as well as for the honour bestowed on me to speak in it. From the little I have gleaned, biochemistry professor Olumbe Bassir was concerned with mechanistic science and unafraid to interrogate at the macro and the molecular level in the days when it was neither fashionable nor easy to do so. I am somewhat intimidated to be giving a talk in his honour, to an audience that undoubtedly includes some of his direct mentees as well as others who were taught by a Bassir-trained scientist. I hope I can do his memory justice as well as make you a little excited about enteric bacteria, about genetics and the modes of questioning in my field of research.