General Information and Academic Programme (Faculty)

The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine offers a degree programme leading to the award of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree. The course extends over a minimum of 6 years for JME candidates and 5 years of Direct Entry candidates. It comprises a pre-professional phase of oneyear duration and a professional phase of five-year duration (DVM I to V).

Philosophy, Objectives and Scope of the Programme

The programme is structured to inculcate the understanding of basic anatomic and physiologic features of a range of normal animals as a prelude to the assessment of deviations in various disease conditions.  The inter-relationship of production disease and management must be appreciated. The programme emphasizes the philosophy that the profession exists to alleviate the suffering caused by diseases to animals, encourage production of animals, encourage production of animals to satisfy various human needs and to ensure human health by prevention of Zoonic diseases. The aim of the programme is to produce well trained graduates who will become self-employed veterinarians. The professional programme is based a 20-week semester.

Job Opportunities

Veterinary Medicine is closely related to human Medicine as, well as, pharmaceutical, biological and animal sciences. Thus its study is of importance in understanding public health and ecological problems.  With this background and education, the Veterinarian has many employment opportunities. Some of the exiting career opportunities in Veterinary Medicine in Nigeria are as follows:

• Government Services: Federal, State or Local Governments with assignments in food animal production, disease control and eradication; meat inspection, public health, animal disease research and administrative positions.
• Public health: Veterinarians are employed by several agencies for formulating and reforming many food and sanity laws related to public and animals.
• Teaching and Research: Veterinarians are employed in various veterinary and Medical faculties Research Institutes. Veterinary / Biological production and Animal Research institutes, Veterinary Biological product and animal diseases investigation centres and in schools training livestock diseases, investigation centres and in School training Livestock Assistance farm personnel. 
• Industry: Those dealing with development and production of pharmaceuticals and food to both human use as well as in their quality control and marking employed veterinarians.
• Private Practice: With increase in number of companion animals (dogs, cats, birds) being reared by Nigerians, performance animals (horse) and commercial livestock production in private and public sectors, private veterinary practice has become the most lucrative avenue for self-employment of veterinarians in Nigeria. 
• Extension Veterinarians: Mostly employed by Federal or State Ministries for disseminating the research findings of veterinary faculties and research institutes to livestock and poultry farmers, as well as identifying the problems in the field that can be solved by the above faculties and research institutes.
• Fish, Zoo and Wild Life Medicine: With the establishment of more wild game reserves and zoos and fish ponds there is increased scope of employment for veterinarians in these areas. 
• Police Force: With increase in the number of mounted troops and police dogs, more veterinarians are recruited by the Nigerian Police Force to cater for the welfare of these animals. 
• Nigeria Army: The Nigerian Armed Forces also recruit Veterinarians as Officers to cater for the welfare of animals used by mounted troops.

Abstracts

Staff Profile