The House of Representatives on Tuesday took steps to establish the Nigeria Centre for Vaccine Research and Development to respond to the outbreak of infectious disease such as the Covid-19 pandemic that brought the country to its knees.
This is as the House passed through second reading a Bill seeking to establish the center to amongst others help researchers to develop vaccines that would take care of diseases existing in Nigeria.
Leading the debate on the general principles of Bill, the sponsor, Kasimu Maigari(APC Taraba) said there are so many diseases unknown to other nations that are existing in Nigeria, hence the need for the nation to develop its vaccines.
“We spent billions just to procure a vaccine for COVID-19. There’s so many diseases that are unknown to other nations that are not even aware of the existence of these diseases in our country. We are the only people that can develop these vaccines. Malaria for instance is killing many Nigerians on a daily basis. This bill if passed will help the whole nation to develop our own vaccine and to save a lot of billions we expend annually.
“Bill Gates established the same type of research center in America which is developing hundreds of millions of vaccines yearly, whereas in the whole of Africa we don’t have any vaccine developing center. So it’s very important if we can have this bill passed into law, it will help our researchers in terms of developing this vaccine to ensure diseases existing in Nigeria are taken care of,” he argued.
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Arguing in support of the proposed legislation, Haruna Mshelia from Borno agreed that the Bill is important following the impact of Covid-19 pandemic.
“It’s an important bill. I stood in this house some time back, that out of the 15 antigens that we use for vaccines, none is produced in Nigeria. We have made efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic to see that we start manufacturing vaccines. Manufacturing is the end point, we have to research fast, he said.
Also, Ndudi Elumelu, the Minority Leader, said it has become very imperative for Nigeria to have a vaccine centre where the scientists can research and produce vaccines for the country to take care of its healthcare needs.
“When Ebola came, we were taken by surprise and it was difficult for us to cure Ebola, on the issue of polio, we brought everything from outside the country. So this bill will cure those inadequacies on the issue. We are so insulted that it was as if we were begging the western country to give us COVID-19 vaccine for our people,” Elumelu said.
