The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund, (TETFund), Prof Suleiman Bogoro, said the fund will be providing “mega research support” to four public agencies, led by the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development,( NIPRD), for the purpose of producing drugs.
Prof Bogoro, who disclosed this in a virtual meeting on Institutionalisation of R&D in Nigeria’s Pharmaceutical Subsector Thematic Group, noted that the NIPRD will collaborate with the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, Ibadan to carry out research and production of phytomedicine.
“TETFund will be providing mega research support to some agencies; in a matter of days, maximum one or two weeks thereabouts, who knows even before the end of this week, I may be sitting with about four entities that have been identified.”
“And I am happy to mention here that NIPRD will be leading the mega research thrust in respect of drug development and I intend to request that they work with one or two entities,” he said.
Speaking on the institutional arrangement of the proposed National Research and Development Foundation, NRDF, he said the foundation would be subsumed under the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, when it is established.
The TETFund boss expressed belief that activities of the RDSC are gradually and firmly transforming perceptions about research in the country, adding that the committee was changing people’s opinion about the appropriate direction that the country must take, going forward.
In his remark, the Chairman of TETFund RDSC, Prof Njidda Gadzama, said since its inauguration on September 24, 2020, the committee, which comprises 165 members and 13 thematic groups, has produced about 32 different reports.
