Senate President, Senator Ahmed Lawan on Wednesday stressed the need for concerted efforts by stakeholders in the country to support the development of locally made vaccine in the fight against COVID-19 in the country.
Lawan said Nigeria must find the resources for setting up the enabling environment for the nation’ scientists to collaborate with international agencies and other citizens to have a local vaccines, saying “It is a must. It is a necessity. It is inevitable”.
Speaking at the presentation of a report titled “Legislative responses to COVID-19 in Nigeria” by the Young Parliamentarians Forum (YPF) of the 9th National Assembly in collaboration West Minister Foundation for Democracy (WFD) in Abuja, he expressed concern that with developed nations blocking export of vaccines to other nations, the country may not be able to achieve the desired immunity within the next couple of years if local vaccines are not produced.
He said, “Otherwise, Nigeria may not achieve the needed immunity in the next four or five years with our over 200 million population. This is not a fact based on any scientific research because I don’t want to be misquoted. I am assuming that if it would take the US up to, probably the end of this year to achieve 70 to 75 percent of vaccination for those that are within the age bracket, some developed countries may be looking at next year.
“With our population of over 200 million, we have only vaccinated about four million people. I don’t know how we can get 70 percent of our people vaccinated in the next two to three years which will translate into about 150 million or even more. So we need to work hard and provide the legislative intervention in terms of resources and environment for our scientists to work.”
