The Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions (ASURI) has urged the Federal Government to spend 20 percent of the donations received to fight the COVID-19 pandemic received on research for a cure.
ASURI General Secretary Theophilus Ndubuaku, made the call on Monday in a memo addressed to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID19.
The memo was written o behalf of the National Institute for Medical Research, the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development, the National Institute for Trypanosomiasis Research, the Nigerian Natural Medicine Development Agency and the National Biotechnology Development Agency.
They charged the Federal Government to look inwards in finding the cure for coronavirus.
They also asked the government to devote a minimum of one-fifth of the monetary donations received towards combating the coronavirus pandemic to funding health-related research.
It reads: “It is worthy of note that one of Nigeria’s mandate research institutes, the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), which has the capacity to bail us out had been conducting studies on coronavirus even before its outbreak. Besides, NIMR had a couple of its own corona test kits acquired through collaborative efforts with foreign donors while the government was still scrambling to put things together.”
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