ABUJA, Nigeria (AFP) – Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday met Microsoft founder Bill Gates and hailed the contributions he and his wife have made to healthcare delivery in Nigeria and around the world.

"I thank you for what you are doing for the world. Thank you for all the time and money you have been investing to make the world safer and healthier," an official statement quoted Jonathan as saying during the meeting.

"Thank you also for what you are doing for Nigeria as a nation. We appreciate and commend your efforts," he stated.

Jonathan welcomed the news from Gates that his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was working on developing an effective malaria vaccine by 2015, the statement added.

He also acknowledged the reported drop in polio cases in Nigeria from 256 in 2009 to just three so far this year, a situation he attributed to the joint efforts of the government, the Gates Foundation and other stakeholders, it said.

Gates said that since his last visit to Nigeria in February 2009, Nigeria had witnessed a greater reduction in polio cases than any country in the world.

The US billionaire said that he was in Nigeria for consultations on what was needed to ensure that polio never re-emerged on a large scale in Africa's most populous nation.

Gates was in Kano on Sunday to assess the impact of polio immunisation in this once polio-endemic state and epicentre of the transmission of the crippling viral disease throughout the world.

"It is fantastic to be here to see so much progress, in reducing the polio burden," Gates told a gathering of political and traditional leaders in Kano.

"The good result we have seen this year in Kano is a combination of good work and some good luck that the virus has not come back from any of the neighboring countries," Gates said.

In the last 17 months Kano state, which has been a centre of the polio virus in Nigeria, has not recorded a single polio virus transmission