Nigeria Set For ‘Ground-Breaking Research’ As Buhari Approves N8.5bn For TETFund

In a move that could spur local production of vaccines to combat COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, President Muhammadu has approved N8.5 billion for the Tertiary Education Trust (TETFund) for onward disbursement to government-owned tertiary institutions to undertake research in medicine and other disciplines under the National Research Fund (NRF).

Disclosing this on Wednesday, TETFund Executive Secretary, Professor Suleiman Bogoro, said the fund would be disbursed to the Nigerian Medical Research Institute (NMIR) to aid “ground breaking” research.

Advertisement

“With your support, I made a case to the board of trustees to increase the NRF research grants, from initially we had a seed money of N3 billion it got exhausted and N1billion was added between 2016 and 2019,” Bogoro said on Wednesday during a workshop organised for directors of research and development in government universities.

“But when I came, I decided to revolutionise it and I said it is not a question of seed money let it be annual money. And that is why I made a case for N5 billion in 2019 alone. 2020 we raised it to N7.5 billion.

“This year Mr President has approved another N7.5 billon but, guess what, with additional N1 billion that we intend to do ground breaking research around medicine even in respect of the Covid-19 challenge,” he said.

Nigeria, like many African countries, has relied on foreign facilities such as the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) to access COVID-19 vaccines.

Advertisement

But the NRF intervention is expected support academics in government tertiary institutions to embark on applied research and innovation that could see the country producing vaccines and treatments and positioning itself for future outbreaks of diseases.

Bogoro is expected to soon meet with the Director General of NMIR, Prof Babatunde Salako, and academics in different fields to deliberate on research areas to channel to the fund into.

Leave a comment

Advertisement