Yaba Medical School was a colonial medical training college founded in 1930 to train medical assistants with the award of a diploma. This school, which signaled the commencement of medical education in Nigeria, was merged with the newly formed University College of Ibadan in 1948, which graduated its first medical class in 1960. By this time, most West African countries had not established their own medical schools, and the Francophone countries relied on the Dakar school while Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia relied solely on the Ibadan facility to meet their needs for medical personnel.
The Yaba Medical School, patterned after the Dakar School of Medicine with combined medicine and pharmacy student training was opened with 14 medical scholars at Kings’ College, Lagos and 57 pharmacy students. The Training College was the outcome of the series of conferences in 1927 in which colonial territories of Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Gold Coast studied the Dakar school with a view of implanting a medical school in West Africa to serve all of the colonies. Membership of the Board of Advisers of the school announced in 1937 included Eric Moore, Dr. K.A. Abayomi and the principals of Igbobi College and St. Gregory College.