------- Forwarded message -----From: "Oluwatobiloba Daniel ADEWUNMI" <odaadewunmi@gmail.com>To: "Prof . Ayo Olukotun" <Ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>Cc:Sent: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 15:24Subject: Prof. Olukotun's ColumnCOVID-19: NIGERIAN SCIENCE AT THE MARGINS
by Ayo Olukotun
Expectedly, a flurry of scientific activities targeted at finding vaccines and cures for the Coronavirus pandemic has assumed centre place in the last couple of months. Across the globe, there are over a hundred research projects going on in such countries like United States, United Kingdom, China, Germany and several others. A recent output is the experimental drug, REMDESIVIR, announced a couple of days back by the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as possessing the capacity to shorten the rate of recovery of people who come down with the pandemic. Though, as the scientists admit, it is far from being the anticipated wonder cure for the disease. It constitutes a respectable advance in the continuing frenetic search for remedies, therapies and cures. Given this background, the question naturally pops up, what is the location of Nigerian science and scientists in the global map of innovative medical and pharmaceutical research? Well, a tentative answer is that Nigerian scientists, this time around, are not completely absent from the picture, even though, obviously, they remain at the margins.
Attracting acclaim from the global scientific community, for example, are the efforts of two institutions devoted to genomics of the infectious disease, namely, Redeemers University at Ede, Osun State, which warehouses the African Centre of Excellence for the Genomics of Infectious Diseases, as well as the Centre for Human Virology and Genomics, located at the Nigerian Institute for Medical Research, Lagos. A few days after the first confirmed case of the COVID-19 in the country, Nigerian scientists working in these institutions in collaboration with the Centre for Disease Control, developed the first genome sequence akin to DNA, of SARS-CoV2 from Africa, making it available to the global scientific community. Interestingly, it took only three days to traverse the journey from receipt of the Nigerian sample to producing the sequence genomics, suggesting, as has been widely noted, an appreciable level of technical competence and scientific rigour. It can be predicted that, especially with the possession by Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, of national biosafety laboratories, that Nigerian participation in problem solving regarding future viruses will no longer be as desultory as it was during the Ebola outbreak of 2014. That said, there is little doubt that, in spite of the gains made by top scientists working in elite institutions, our universities and research institutes are largely absent from the cutting edge of research connected with the pandemic. Why is that so? In search of an answer, this columnist called up two senior academics engaged in medical and pharmaceutical research, namely Tiwa Olugbade, a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and Jones Moody, Professor of Pharmacognosy at the University of Ibadan. Olugbade alluded to the crash programme approach which the nation is taking to such issues which normally require years of patient and sustained investment in primary and applied research. According to him, ad-hoc solutions will not work, but rather, purpose based facilities such as virology laboratories, decent infrastructure that can sustain high level research, highly motivated personnel, and a political leadership, knowledgeable about and committed to scientific research. For far too long, Olugbade maintained, we have merely paid lip service to research, while underfunding our research institutes. The scholar's point here is buttressed by the virtual desolation of our 26 research institutes owned by the Federal Government, which in 2018, embarked on a 4 months strike over poor welfare conditions and consistent underfunding (see for example, Ayo Olukotun, 'Researchers' Strike and a Disappearing Research Culture, The Punch, Friday, 16th March, 2018).
One of the institutes affected by the strike is the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development, Abuja, which in its heyday, pioneered experiments and discoveries in the treatment of sickle cell anemia and several other diseases. It is to be lamented that such a cornerstone research outfit was allowed to decay to the point where very little, if anything at all, is heard from it. Contrast this scenario with Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory at Winnipeg, which came up, in the throes of the Ebola crisis, with the life saving drug, ZMapp, providing, thereby, a cure and a remedy for a global pandemic. Also take into account, the fact that Canada, according to statistics collated a few years ago, funds medical and pharmaceutical research to the tune of 1 billion dollars annually.
My second respondent, Moody, submitted that as far as natural and human resources go, Nigeria possesses the abundance to have jumpstarted a global scientific role. The problems are, however, Moody insists, a dire lack of infrastructural support for research, and a shortage of the political will to collate and harness natural and human resources for takeoff. Amplifying the point, the scholar gave the example that the Chemistry laboratory he conducted experiments in, in the course of his Higher School Certificate at the famous Titcombe College, Egbe, Kogi State is of a higher quality and better resourced than what currently obtains in any Nigerian university. The aphorism that it takes a million dollars to ask a question at the frontiers of scientific research comes to mind here. Put in another way, how can Nigerian scientists working in decrepit and ill-maintained laboratories be part of a global dialogue in breakthrough research in the medical and pharmaceutical sectors? To the point here is the fact that the well equipped laboratory at Ede, from where samples collected from Nigerians are being tested for COVID-19 is largely a private sector initiative, in conjunction with the World Bank, rather than a deliberate government creation to up the ante in scientific research.
Just like our hospitals are in such disrepair that their credibility is doubted, the infrastructure which ought to buttress scientific inventions is tattered and desolate. Some scholars and analysts have recently written about the need to ginger up alternative medical research through the rediscovery of medicinal plants; it is doubtful however, whether we have demonstrated the required gravitas and investment to arrive at such a destination in the midst of a crisis. Committees upon committees have been set up on alternative medicine, but, have their recommendations become policy?
To make a turnaround in the contributions of Nigerian science and scientists to such pandemics as Coronavirus, it is suggested that some of the funds donated by the private sector, as well as some earmarked for relief, be diverted into groundbreaking research in those universities that have the potential to conduct fundamental research. Furthermore, and considering that important researches take time to gestate, we must take another look at what is going on at the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, where presumably, a lot of idle funds are locked up in a bureaucratic gridlock, while our universities and research institutes are on a shoestring. Ultimately, a country gets the kind of research that it is willing to pay for and maintain. Our politicians can quickly raise billions of Naira on the eve of an election, when they have a mind to do so. We must now reeducate them that research directed at saving and prolonging human lives is far more important than their electoral triumphs, which seem not to redeem the human condition.
Finally, our scientists should be encouraged to cultivate international partnerships and collaborative projects that can better situate them in front line basic research.
- Prof. Ayo Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Sikiru Adetona Chair of Governance, Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye.
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