NVRI: An enduring animal disease control centre

National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI) established in 1924 in Vom, near the Plateau State capital, Jos; has a history that really dates further back to  1913 when a veterinary department was set up in Zaria, in present day Kaduna State, to meet health demands of animals: cattle at first, and subsequently poultry products.
The years 1885 to 1890 experienced outbreak of rinderpest, an infectious viral disease of cattle, buffaloes, antelopes, deer and giraffes, which has now been eradicated. That first rinderpest scourge reportedly caused the death of 90 percent of the cattle population, and was followed by another bitter experience in the years 1912-1913 when the same rinderpest epidemic reduced a cattle population of nine million to 2.7 million.
This was when what was the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria decided to introduce veterinary services, leading to the establishment of the veterinary department in Zaria. The veterinary department functioned over a few years conducting livestock census and disease surveys and controlling diseases, among other tasks, and was moved to Plateau, first to the Foron District in Barkin-Ladi Local Government Area in 1921; but was soon moved, in 1924, to its present site in Vom, in Jos South LGA.
Today, Vom serves as the headquarters of the sprawling NVRI, which occupies 20,719 hectares of land housing infrastructure for research laboratories, offices, staff quarters, recreational facilities, a guest house, banks, schools, and some other institutions.
The principal objective of the NVRI is to develop and produce animal vaccines to meet national need. The institute was quick in doing this, as it formulated the first ‘Anti-Rinderpest Serum’ in Vom in 1925. The serum which was devised to control rinderpest outbreaks was used for mass immunization of all cattle around Northern Nigeria until its production was stopped in 1944.
The organization changed names over the decades. In 1954, the Veterinary Department was renamed Federal Department of Veterinary Research. In 1975, the department became autonomous and was renamed National Veterinary Research Institute, the name it bears now, with its own Governing Board, and is currently under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.
Its management was in the hands of foreign experts deployed by the British colonial masters until 1968 when Dr. Musa Goni was appointed substantive Director and became the first Nigerian to succeed the expatriates.
The Institute has over time expanded its activities and has become one of the most renowned veterinary research institutes in Africa producing quality vaccines and offering services for the identification, control and eradication of economically important livestock diseases.
In conformity with one of its leading objectives, namely, ‘To develop and produce animal vaccines to meet the national demand,’ the National Veterinary Research Institute has produced scores of vaccines, many discontinued mainly because animal disease situations changed, such as when rinderpest was eradicated.
Among the vaccines that the Institute still produces include Black Quarter Vaccine (1929); Anthrax Spore Vaccine (1930); Haemorrhagic Septicaemia Vaccine (1932); Fowl Cholera Vaccine (1947); Fowl Pox Vaccine (1947); Fowl Typhoid Vaccine, 9S Strain (1947); and Newcastle Disease Vaccine, Komorov Strain (1953).
Other vaccines which the Institute still produces are LEP (Flury) Rabies Vaccine for dogs (1956); Newcastle Disease Vaccine, Intraocular B1 Strain (1963); Newcastle Disease Vaccine, LaSota Strain (1968); HEP (Flury) Rabies Vaccine for cats (1971); Contagious Bovine Pleuro-pnemonia Vaccine, T1/44 Strain (1971);
Gumboro Vaccine, German Strain (1971); Bovine Brucellosis Vaccine, S-19 Strain (1983); Peste des Petits Ruminants Virus Vaccine (1999).
Among the lot, Anthrax Spore Vaccine is used to immunize cattle, sheep, goat, and pigs against anthrax disease; Black Quarter Vaccine is used to immunize cattle and sheep against clostridia infection which causes lameness; while the anti-Newscastle vaccine variants work against the Newscastle disease, a contagious bird disease affecting many domestic and wild species, which was first identified in Java, Indonesia in 1926, and in 1927 in Newcastle, England, from where it got its name.
Another objective of the NVRI which it has been implementing with readily available evidences is the training of manpower in veterinary laboratory technology and animal health and production technology.
In this light, formal veterinary training began in 1945 when a Veterinary School, Vom, was completed and it started to turn out veterinary assistants. The curriculum of the school expanded over time and in 1963, a course leading to Diploma in Animal Health and Husbandry was started. In 1980, the school was renamed College of Animal Health and Husbandry. Its Veterinary Assistant Certificate was replaced with Ordinary Diploma (OD) while the Diploma Certificate was replaced with Higher Diploma (HD) in Animal Health and Husbandry.
The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) granted the College approval for National Diploma (ND) programmes in Animal Health and Production in 1989 and Higher National Diploma (HND) programmes in 1992. The College came under the name Federal College of Animal Health and Production Technology, the name it currently bears, in 1991. Besides diploma courses, the College runs certificate courses in Poultry Production, Beef Production, and Swine Production.
The School has the reputation of being the first Higher Institution in West Africa to produce graduate Veterinary Surgeons. The school also played a key role, especially in the years between 1947 to 1962, in training middle level veterinary manpower for other African countries, especially the Cameroons, Gambia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan.