Professor Akin Abayomi
Lagos State Commissioner for Health
Key-note speaker
Akin Abayomi hails from Anjorin Abayomi House, Church Street in ward B1, Lagos Island. He received his first degree in Medicine from the University of London. He is a specialist in Internal Medicine, Haematology, Biosecurity and Environmental Health with postgraduate fellowships from the Royal College of Medicine and Pathology in the United Kingdom and the College of Medicine of South Africa.
Prof Akin Abayomi has published over 80 medical articles and book chapters in peer reviewed journals and books on diverse medical and environmental conditions from his experience working in 4 continents based on which he was admitted into the African Academy of Science. Professor Abayomi was Chief Pathologist at the University of Stellenbosch’s Faculty of Medicine in Cape Town, South Africa till 2018.
Akin Abayomi is the Founder of the African Biosecurity Consortium also known as GET-Africa, which was entrenched at the peak of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa to address Biosecurity concerns in Africa. He is a member of the Board and Honorary Professor of the Centre for Biosecurity Studies, at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. Akin Abayomi returned to Nigeria from South Africa in 2018 and was engaged as a Professor of Medicine at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research in Lagos, Nigeria. He is a consultant to the ECOWAS member countries on Health Security.
He is also a recipient of the National Productivity Order of Merit Award conferred by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in recognition of high productivity, hard work, and excellence in his professional service to Nigeria. Akin Abayomi was also bestowed with the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in recognition of his selfless service to the country.
Professor Akin Abayomi is the immediate past Honourable Commissioner for Health in Lagos State, under the administration of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu. While he was Commissioner, he guided the Lagos State’s COVID-19 response on a day-to-day basis as Deputy Incident Commander, where the Ministry of Health successfully ensured that the State’s health system was able to provide care to its residents while containing the spread of the virus. Under his leadership, the health system of Lagos State has undergone transformation, affecting such areas as policy, governance, infrastructure, and human resources for health.
During his time as a member of the cabinet of the Lagos State Government, Prof. Akin Abayomi served as a member of the Lagos State 30-year development planning team. Professor Akin Abayomi plays lawn tennis, rides horses and in his more agile years played polo for the Kaduna and Ibadan Polo clubs. He is an avid environmentalist and along with family members, maintains a large private forest nature reserve at Ikoyi Osun near Asejire dam on the banks of the Osun River called The Emerald Forest Reserve.
