THE FIRST SCHOOL OF OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY IN NIGERIA

Occupational Therapy is one of the momentous and still developing area of Medical Rehabilitation in Africa. It is concern with helping individual with physical, mental, social and psychological illnesses leading to disabilities to actively engage in daily occupations or routines peculiar to them.

For over (10) ten years the Management of Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital Yaba had been desirous of meeting up with international standards in the provision of medical care, generally and for the mentally ill in particular. One area of disadvantage is in having a full complement of staff to make up a multi-disciplinary therapeutic team most especially because of the scarcity of professionally qualified Occupational Therapists. Occupational Therapy in Nigeria is almost extinct, with less than ten practitioners presently both in public and private sectors.
Occupational Therapy is not widely known in Africa. In Nigeria today Occupational Therapy is in transition i.e. from being occulted and overshadowed by Physical Therapy then to a recognized profession under Medical Rehabilitation. In the last decades, Nigeria had a very few Occupational Therapist practitioners and yet widely needed in the Medical fields. That led to the establishment of the First school of Occupational Therapy in Nigeria and in West Africa by the management of Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital. Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria. And the Federal Ministry of Health in the year 2003. The school was Named FEDERAL SCHOOL OF OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY (FSOT)

As a matter of fact, the idea of establishing an Occupational Therapy School was conceived by the then Medical Director of the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, DR. IDOWU MALOMO who did not only have the foresight to recognize the apparent dearth of this noble profession, but who went ahead to ensure that something was done about it. Attempts to sponsor a staff member for training abroad were frustrated by prohibitive foreign exchange implications.


The Management Board, based on the Technical Committee reports, sought for approval of the Federal Ministry of Health and this was given on the 15th March, 2002. On approval, the Minister also granted the use of the abandoned Government property near the hospital for the take-off of the school.

A prominent member of the Technical Committee that facilitated the procedure of approval was the Late Mr. J.T. Adamu, Deputy Director (Nursing), in the Federal Ministry of Health. He sadly did not live to see the school commissioned on the 17th of March 2003 by Professor ABC Nwosu, the former Minister of Health. The first set of the products of the school were convocated on the 17th December, 2005.

The Federal School of Occupation Therapy was declared open by Professor A.B.C Nwosu, the Honourable Minister of Federal Ministry of Health and Social Services on Monday 17^th March 2003. Since 17^th December, 2005. Federal School of Occupational Therapy have been awarding a Professional Diploma in Occupational Therapy to Successful Graduates of the school. The Graduates of the school are known professionally as Occupational Therapist Assistant (OTA), licensed by Medical Rehabilitation Therapy board of Nigeria (MRTBN).

Still to come; History of Occupational Therapy in Nigeria