“People are talking of the Chinese vaccine, the Russian vaccine, the vaccine from the Untied Kingdom, the vaccine from the United States of America. I am really yet to hear about a vaccine (for COVID-19) from Nigeria”
–Professor Kayode Soremekun, Vice Chancellor, Federal University, Oye Ekiti, The PUNCH, Tuesday, August 25, 2020.
The opening quote sourced from Kayode Soremekun, Vice-Chancellor of Federal University, Oye Ekiti, poses queries about the status of our national scientific establishment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. What the Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, calls vaccine nationalism aside, there is much to regret in the absence of our universities, research institutes, pharmaceutical companies and cognate organisations in the global race for vaccine development in a critical season such as this is.
As Soremekun observed, most of the developed countries and even some developing ones have lined up in the quest for finding a vaccine and in some cases a cure for the pandemic. It is a long list but apart from those he directly mentioned, there are also others such as Canada, India, Japan, Singapore as well as South Korea. So every country that considers itself worthy of a place on the global scientific map has invested considerable efforts in vaccine development and other therapies. Not just that, major universities such as Oxford and Imperial College both in the United Kingdom are at the forefront of the current scientific expedition.
Mark you, it is not as if Nigerian scientists are completely silent, it is just that whatever efforts they are putting in does not seem to matter in a world, where they have been left behind. For example, the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, revealed recently that apart from Professor Maurice Iwu, three other Nigerian scientists have submitted samples of their work and findings for verification. Apart from that, a research group coordinated by Dr Oladipo Kolawole announced recently that it had found a vaccine for COVID-19, which will reach the market in roughly 15 months’ time. It is not possible at this stage to comment on the credibility of this seemingly heroic efforts.
Bear in mind however that vaccine development is ordinarily a long process, expected to take between 10 and 15 years, although most of the ongoing efforts plan to skip stages and to accelerate the process reducing them to between 12 and 18 months. The process, it is well known, involves research, pre-clinical preparation. leading to clinical trials after which comes approval by the scientific community, succeeded by drug manufacturing, distribution and marketing. What this should tell us, to begin with, is that it is not a short sprint, let alone a walk in the park. There is no case of vaccine development that is not preceded by qualitative research over a period of time taking place in well-furnished laboratories. The University of Oxford group whose work appears to be leading the pack of candidates for the vaccine had reportedly engaged itself on vaccines for an unknown disease that could lead to a pandemic. It did not initially zero in on the current pandemic but its earlier research provided the stimulus and backdrop for its later seminal output on COVID-19. Interestingly, the Oxford Group, some four months, back got $25 million from the UK government to jumpstart its work.
What to note at this point is that Nigeria, assuming it has set the agenda for vaccine development, cannot jump the gun or suddenly gate-crash into vaccine development without the necessary buttressing scientific infrastructure, highly motivated personnel, centres of scientific and technological excellence which warehouse researchers of calibre and large scale funding. Recently, both the Central Bank and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) announced grants to be competed for to catalyse scientific development in areas related to the Pandemic. Specifically, TETFund is hoping to reshape medical research by building molecular science laboratories for testing and diagnosing COVID-19, Lassa fever among other diseases. To achieve this, funding will be given to six Colleges of Medicine with one in each geopolitical zone. While this effort is commendable, it must be considered a long term project which harvest will come in the not so near future.
If we were to have mattered or to have received honourable mention in the current global race, we would have started things of this nature three or so decades ago. Indeed, some cynics may consider some of what is taking place as coming too little and too late. However, and as is characteristic of this columnist, we must always keep hope alive. Nonetheless, the lacuna offers a clue as to why a Nigerian vaccine for COVID-19 is absent and hardly in the works in the foreseeable future. The backward status of our science should also remind us of the need, long canvassed, to graduate some of our universities into centres of excellence as a replacement for the model of viewing universities as distributive amenities to be shared according to the logic of geopolitical zones and federal character. It will be idle, for example, to expect universities established in the last five or so years to suddenly come up with world class scientific discoveries ahead of establishing laboratories at the cutting edge of science and technology.
More fundamentally, universities and research institutes starved of funds and amenities, lacking in regular electricity can hardly be expected to suddenly show up or meaningfully compete at the global level. It will be interesting to know for example, the quantum, quality and pedigree of pharmaceutical and medical research that take place within the Nigerian ecology. For, it is no use talking big when we have not even taken care of little problems. Universities only a few years old, public and private, are fond of referring to themselves as world class when in most cases they have not even cut their academic milk teeth. Indeed, in terms of research and discoveries, our centers of learning are increasingly disconnected from the rest of the globe.
Although institutions and societies can skip stages of development according to the law of combined and uneven development, there are some fundamentals that cannot be done away with. That is another way of saying that if Nigerian science wants to matter in the foreseeable future, we must set clear goals which connotes incremental growth and benchmarks in the journey to viability. One of the reasons for the failure of many of our grand dreams such as Vision 20:2020 is the lack of signposts that will clearly show what has been achieved thus far and what we need to do to make further progress. It was not many years ago that a Nigerian President spoke about producing another Nigerian Nobel but as far as this writer is aware no serious effort was made in the direction of accomplishing the goal.
A final point to consider is the need to clearly set the agenda beyond fine speeches and activities taking place in silos without an overall and connecting vision. If a Nigerian vaccine for COVID-19 must emerge, it must become an articulated national priority supported by action plans with stages of implementation. Until and unless this is done, we will merely be gyrating in the dark.
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