“Being the world’s largest black nation with a population of 200m, Nigeria has no option than to become a major pharmaceutical manufacturer”.
BEING the world’s largest black nation with a population of 200m, Nigeria is a readymade pharmaceutical market, especially for drugs and remedies that treat tropical ailments. Like India, that cashed in on the opportunity of the coronavirus pandemic to establish itself as the pharmacy of the world, Nigeria desperately needs to start attracting drug companies and become a major manufacturing pharmaceutical economy.
Emerging markets create the highest growth rates in pharmaceuticals because population
and consumption increases are among the major drivers of expansion in the sector. Spending on health care tends to also grow with rising household income and across Africa, the continental pharmaceutical market is estimated to be worth about $65bn and the main challenge for the continent is to meet this demand through domestic production.
At the moment, Nigeria, like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria is highly dependent on drug imports to meet its pharmaceutical needs. Covid-19, however, has proven that his dependency us not sustainable and should serve as a wake-up call to the continent to emulate India and start manufacturing drugs locally.
For instance, during the pandemic, a Chinese medical team visited Nigeria and the trip should have been an ideal opportunity to kick-start a bilateral pharmaceutical manufacturing programme. Was the visiting Chinese team for instance asked to enter into a partnership with Innoson Motors to manufacture 50,000 ventilators a year.
Under the terms of such a deal, the Chinese partners could easily provide the capital for the reconfiguration of the Innoson automobile plant and professional expertise. Beijing’s China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) could also have entered into joint ventures with at least six Nigerian companies to produce facemasks with a target of 200m units a year
In addition, the deal could have involved China undertaking to train at least 1,000 Nigerian doctors a year free of charge. It would have been no burden to the CCECC to open at least two pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria with the ultimate goal of manufacturing all drugs sold across Africa in Nigeria.
If we want to be honest, Nigeria dropped the ball big time during the pandemic as with global demand for pharmaceuticals stretched, it would have been the ideal time for new players to enter the market. What stopped Nigeria asking the CCECC to start manufacturing Covid-19 test kits in Nigeria, with a target of about 10m units a year.
Given that Orlu is the pharmaceutical capital of Nigeria, any mega drug plan should be built there with the Chinese undertaking to build an integrated electricity plant there to generate 5,000MW to power all the facilities. If a 1,000-bed tropical diseases hospital was built there as part of this complex, the rest of the world would have been forced to take notice of Nigeria.
What makes the missing of the Covid-19 boat more painful is that Nigeria, being the world’s largest black nation had one unique advantage. Ur appears that nobody noticed that the global malaria and Covid-19 maps were totally converse and it appeared that the two ailments were actually avoiding each other
One is a tropical disease, while the other is a temperate virus ad there is very little overlap between them. In addition, from what we know so far, anti-malaria drugs like Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine enjoyed some success against coronavirus
It is not unreasonable to take the view that the solution to Covid-19 is tropical and reach the conclusion that both a vaccine and a cure lie out there somewhere in the tropics. One of our African plants contains the cure for coronavirus.
Unfortunately, there were no teams of Nigerian scientists trying everything from papaya seeds, to yam peelings, to cocoyam leaves, to cassava shoots, to neem bark, to kolanut coating, to plantain skin, etc. Nigeria’s native “Agbo” herb is 100% effective against malaria, so logically, it can be made 100% effective against coronavirus with the necessary adjustments once the legwork and research is put in.
Where were Nigeria’s virologists, pharmacists, microbiologists and biochemists, to lead the research on this? Nigerians have got to get out of this bad habit of waiting for the government to come up with ideas. For instance, why did no Nigerian scientist put anything together and taken it to Governor Babajide Sanwoolu’ isolation hospital at Onikan to show the doctors and officials there?
Once more, our intellectual laziness is proving to be an albatross around our collective necks. As the world’s largest black nation, I believe Nigeria owed the world a cure for coronavirus and this should have been the beginning of a radical expansion plan that would see the nation take the tropical disease industry by storm.
Are we even aware of the fact that Nigeria is the world’s second largest neem producer behind India? As soon as the pandemic struck, India began carrying out significant research into the use of neem as an effective cure for coronavirus.
Neem, like many other crops such as papaya, cocoyam and guava grows in the wild across Nigeria but sadly the country dies not even have records of how much it produces annually. There are no dedicated plantations to grow the crop in a controlled environment desite the fact that as far back as 2005, it was estimated that it could generate up to $6bn in export earnings for Nigeria.
By now, the pharmaceutical departments in several Nigerian universities should all have concluded programmes to convert neem into a medication drug. It is still perplexing that not one governor has not spotted this potential and sought to exploit it.
For instance, how come nobody has asked the likes of Pfizer, Bayern, GlaxoSmithKline or Proctor & Gamble to come and open a neem research facility in Nigeria? This is the kind of initiative we need to see from Nigerian state governors if we want to rise up to this challenge.
A10-opint plan Nigeria could have launched when the pandemic broke out:
[1] Insist that the likes of Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline open manufacturing plants in Nigeria. If they do not, Nigerian could clampdown on flights to Europe and the US
[2] Open up a tourist convalescence centre in Lagos, similar to the cancer recovery centres in Mexico
[3] Distribute any vaccine all across Africa and bill the World Health Organisation for it
[4] Get Innoson Motors to manufacture hand-held personal ventilators
[5] Get Innoson to mass-produce hand-held test kits
[6] Get the United Nigerian Textiles Mills to start manufacturing vaccine-treated
facemasks. Basically, it vaccinates you once you put it on
[7] Manufacture special anti-Covid motorcycle and cycling helmets
[8] Get Nigerian private sector manufacturers to make special builders hard hats with built-in face shields
[9] Start immediate research into which tropical plant is the best ingredient for any vaccine. Then mass produce it
[10] Ask Innoson Motors to look at manufacturing an air conditioning system that sprays a vaccination.
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