Encounter with Professor Bogoro: Changing the narratives on TETfund

When Professor Sulaiman Bogoro was appointed the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund otherwise known as TETfund, he looked forward to completing the five-year tenure. Little did he know that allegations, bordering on diversion of funds could scuttle his dreams. Twenty four months into his tenure, he was sent packing, set to vacate the office before the National Assembly found out he was never part of the administration that diverted about N279 billion to settle the protracted ASUU crisis. The Agric Scientist, who was, however, reappointed to the same seat by President Muhammadu Buhari months after spoke to STANLEY NKWAZEMA about the embarrassment he faced and the paradigm shift he is championing in the interventionist agency.

You were removed and later reappointed during your first tenure, how did it all happen?

My first tenure of five years by law was aborted by my disengagement after just one year and ten months along with many others on the basis of frivolous allegations. At some point in time, the allegations and petitions against me were coming from virtually everywhere. Some of the times when I read some of the allegations, I knew some people just fabricated it just to see me out. When somebody says he has seen a virgin in a maternity ward, he wants everybody to believe him. He knows the lies but he chooses to communicate it. At some point, that was about the case. It was an allegation that the then Senate president asked the Committee on Education, led by Senator Binta Marsi Garba of Adamawa Sate to investigate and report back to the whole house.

Firstly, the allegation was that as the Executive Secretary, I diverted N200 billion. They also added that I used the money to finance the ruling party at that time, which was the PDP. I knew instantly that there was never a N200 billion missing in TETFUND records. What I knew, however, was that there was N279.3 billion diverted on the instruction of then President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to the Minister of Finance then Prof Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to fund the ASUU negotiations and agreement.

Was there a virement for such money?

Don’t preempt me. I will answer you. Today, as I speak, there has been similar instructions of such money, belonging to TETFUND even by this government. I can confirm it to you. I have the records. It happens once in a while. The beauty of the entire thing is that, the day I appeared before the Senate Committee, I told them first and foremost, there was never N200 billion missing. Incidentally, most of the money was diverted between 2013 for the purpose of paying the ASUU agreement mainly. They also gave part of it to the PTDF to pay the scholarship fees for some students under the scheme and another agency. At that time, I said that I was not the Executive Secretary of TETFUND yet I was accused of diverting the money to give the PDP for funding the elections. But then the election was in 2015 while the money was used in 2013. Ordinarily, you should know that the money couldn’t have been diverted for the election. They just wanted to paint me negative. They felt that a new government had come and if you want to finish the man, just link him with the allegation. I am saying this because it could be any of you accused wrongly for what you did not do in the near future.

The day I appeared before the Senate Committee, as is the rule of formal protocol, I responded in writing but when I appeared before the Committee on Tertiary Institutions led by Senator Binta Marsi Garba, they had gone through all the documents, they asked the media to leave and decided to go into closed hearing with me so they could invite them back at the end of the engagement. This was because they were ashamed seeing me stand before them because I had destroyed all their arguments when I responded in writing with attachments and evidences. When the Accountant-General of the Federation came in, he told the members of the Red Chamber that all the documents I provided were correct, while confirming that the money was diverted by the then president, who instructed the Minister of Finance to comply. He disclosed to them that TETFUND did not know because they were not informed about the money from the government Treasury to settle ASUU.

Unfortunately, it was while the investigation was ongoing that I was sacked because I knew that some people had vowed that they would remove me. It was somebody that wanted me to drop a Ghana-Must-Go bag in his house every week. I am sorry to say this, but I wouldn’t oblige him. Interestingly, exactly six months after I was sacked, they turned in their report exonerating me. I have the report for my children.

That is the other aspect I wouldn’t want us to discuss here. Luckily enough each of the members of the Senate spoke and not only exonerated me but also apologised because they went through the records and found out that I did not steal any money.

The other aspect is that we spent N500 million on publicity, querying that it was too much. However, when I appeared, I put the fact to the Senate Committee on what the TETFUND budget is, which is over N200 billion and I asked; what is the percentage of N500 million, which is bloody negligible? As you know, this public fund that we are spending, is it not right to let Nigerians know what we are doing with public funds? We have to engage both the print, electronic and other media regularly. And this costs money. It is not free. The cost of buying media space and air time is very expensive. I had to bring the approvals that were made, which I did not do to go to my mother or family members. At the end of the session, the senators said to me, “having read your defence and gone through the accompanying documents, we have realised that you did not spend enough for the media. TETFUND in fairness needs more publicity”

In fact, I challenged them to go out and do more to find out if what I have presented or said are lies, they should make a case for my prosecution.

Intervention programmes

I can name two governors that have come in the last three months; Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna and Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State. These are all smart guys. When they were asked why they came to TETFUND. Quoting El-Rufai, he said “I have many reasons because Professor Bogoro is doing a great job. We should come here and encourage him to do more.”

Akeredolu said, “As far as I am concerned, TETFUND is the best intervention agency in Nigeria today. Why shouldn’t we say it?

Where I came from or what I met and what I am doing going forward?

I met a TETFUND that emerged from Education Trust Fund (ETF) and a few days ago, gave credit to my predecessor, especially the transformation from ETF to TETFUND. He took many of our inputs. By chance, I was privileged to be in ASUU that negotiated ETF between 1990-1992. I was the vice chairman of ASUU in my branch and I still remember the time we went on strike, proscribed and the proscription was lifted. As soon as Professor Mahmud Jega took over from Professor Festus Iyayi in March 1988, we were then managing the very bad relationship between Iyayi and Professor Jibril Aminu, the then minister of education. Prof Aminu had asked the University of Benin to sack Iyayi, which they did. Iyayi went to court and we were debating what to do, but wisdom prevailed in ASUU and we said no, we will ask our colleague to step down because we don’t know how long the case in court will take, let us avoid the legal pitfalls of saying let him continue, another person will go to court. We asked his vice, Prof Jega to take over. That is how we elected Jega to take over from Iyayi in 1988. Of course, you know that Iyayi eventually won his case. Sadly, we lost him as a full Prof only two years ago.

After Jega, we were banned between 1988 and 1990 and we decided to operate with another name. The military government realised they could not silence us forever and lifted the ban in 1990 and we negotiated for two years, signing the agreement in 1992, we constituted our team and met with the government team. They met for nearly two years and that was how the ETF emerged.

We discovered that the appropriation funding window for universities in particular was inadequate. We were concerned about our own constituency. The Colleges of Education and Polytechnics were only beneficiaries of the negotiations by ASUU. They were not part of the negotiations. I can say this for the records. It was ASUU and because we were coherent, we get results. I am sorry to say this. Not that I want to disparage the other unions but that is the truth. We made sure that the money coming to the ETF, the tax from the two per cent profits of companies in Nigeria, should not be kept for only universities, otherwise we will have crisis. Let us invite polytechnics and colleges of education to benefit but let us split the funds into two. One half for the universities and the remaining half for the polytechnics and colleges of education. That is the position of TETFUND till today.

At that time, we said Nigerian universities were glorified secondary schools. Doctors from the universities were going outside en-mass. That was a shame. We said our universities started very well but we were now going down. The worst period was actually in the late 80s to early 90s, which was the worst period of the brain drain, the best brains were leaving the universities, the medical doctors were going to Saudi Arabia, nearly ninety percent. Some left for Europe- UK, Germany, the United States and several others places that you can mention. The majority were Saudi Arabia because they were getting better pay.

Effectively, the point I want to make here is that the budget appropriation window failed the nation. You know it that presently the recurrent component where maybe they are able to get 80-90 percent. But the capital is less than 50 per cent. When you budget 100 percent, you are likely to get 40 or 45 per cent. It is so bad. That amounted to disorienting the universities as nothing visible was coming to show that our universities were advancing. Meanwhile, more universities were being established but the funds were dwindling. It was a big crisis.

It is with that experience, because I was involved and came in with a purpose. We wanted it to be made easier. The education tax fund that became TETFUND in 2011 was because we insisted because that was the original idea. The funds were applied to every sector of education -nursing schools, colleges of agriculture. Even the Nigerian Law Schools were benefiting from the ETF. We disagreed and got it corrected.

In 1999, when President Olusegun Obasanjo put up the Board of Trustees under Eniola Olakunrin, unbelievably, you could now see the physical presence of ETF. From 2011, we now insisted in ASUU that the fund should be applied in only public tertiary institutions. In the law of TETFUND as amended we made sure it was only the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, federal or state that could benefit.

You could see now that the money is being properly channeled, the effect of TETFUND intervention became more manifest from 2011. With the emergence of TETFUND we now introduced academic staff training. Although it was introduced in 2008, with TETFUND taking over from ETF we focused more on the tertiary subsector and there was more focus on physical infrastructure.

At a mega research grant committee, which I addressed recently, I told them that it was very clear for us at that time where we were going in terms of priorities. Academic staff training and development became a top priority at that time because only 40 per cent of university lecturers had PhD. By 2015, the percentage had moved to 60 per cent. I can tell you, as it is now, most of our universities particularly the first-generation universities are getting close to between 85-90 per cent PhD holders because I can say so without fear of contradiction. The second and third generations have in the region of 70-90 per cent. We are hoping that very soon, you cannot be a lecturer without a PhD. We know that new universities have been emerging and we are struggling to cope.

When I came, however, I realised that too much emphasis has been placed on physical infrastructure. Yes, we needed classrooms, we need offices and before TETFUND came into being in 2011, there were no professorial offices. If you go to the universities, in fact, a professor’s office was similar to that of a messenger in any ministry, federal or state. without exaggeration it was as bad as that. It is TETFUND that started the decent and befitting professorial offices and we prescribed and insisted on the must-haves in those offices. Today, virtually all public universities in Nigeria have professorial offices.

Worries about ranking of Nigerian universities

I will link that to infrastructural decay. The first question President Muhammadu Buhari asked in 2015 is why are Nigerian universities poorly ranked?

When I came, I discovered that there was too much emphasis on physical infrastructure. It may also interest you to know that for research grants, there are two categories – Institution Based research (IBR) with a ceiling of Two Million Naira and the National Research Fund which is centrally controlled at TETFUND. The IBR is given to institutions to manage largely for basic research. For applied research which we call problem solving research, it has to be larger which is N50 million. The problem, however, is that for eight years from 2011 to 2019 only four billion naira was committed for research grant of all Nigerian Universities. I did not want that any longer. We had more money to build classrooms, lecture theatres, iconic Senate Buildings as if we are competing with the ministries with elegant buildings. What about the content?

I changed all that as I said we should not be working on seed money research grants to annual research grants, a case I presented to the board of trustees and they approved. In 2019, we started with five billion naira, higher than all the eight years since the fund was started put together. Last year, we raised it to N7.5 billion all at my discretion. This year, it is N8.5 billion. I actually wanted N10 billion but the chairman of the board cracked a joke that “if we leave the Executive Secretary, he will carry all the money for research but we politicians also want to see buildings.” He, however, said that if they stop me, I would resign because I had not met the purpose I set for myself.

Expected Outcome or impact of the interventions

As I speak, the NRF, we are concluding on software to measure the impact of all NRF from when it started, we are now evaluating and will soon publish it. That of the IBR, at the institutional level, we will also proceed and see how we make it available to Nigerians. It may also interest you to know that it is my idea that we should harvest all postgraduate thesis and PhDs in all universities in Nigeria and dematerialise them, which simply means electronic copies or version and we have an inventory. We are handling only PG programmes for now but will come down to Bachelor’s degrees. In the next 12 months we should conclude that project. People are asking questions, simply because they are not informed about the technology. For instance, I defended my PhD in 1997 I can tell you that if I had electronic copy, it will be available on the touch of a button but dematerializing it is very easy with the technology we have now. We are putting more money on research. It is much easier now to engage the academia in research than in politics. Very soon, we are hoping that with more money for research, the lecturers will have some change from the research grants in their pockets. I know what I am saying because there is an administration component.

As a researcher, if you are hardworking, you will never be poor. If you have watched me, I have always talked about problem-solving research. If we do not engage in problem solving, if we want to characterize and interpret Pythagoras theory for the sake of it, we should be talking about how it is being applied for the content and to solve the problem of the day. Let it be applied so that we know the problems and solve them.

The Paradigm Shift

I can tell you that the National Institute for Security Studies has invited me to share experiences on the paradigm shift. I don’t think I need to look at any script because I sleep and think about it. For too long, the academia, our universities, remember that the universities are traditionally and historically the leaders in research. That cannot change and it has remained so. For industries, if you see the Research and Development Funding Committee the Minister for Education inaugurated on September 24, 2020, we deliberately constituted 154 members made up of Nigerians in Nigeria and in the Diaspora. Some of the best of researchers and academia, many from the industries, institutes and relevant centres of excellence of Nigeria are there. I don’t know if you are aware? When you go through that list, you will see the specialisation, the purpose and mandate of each individual. We involve the DG of NASENI, NOTAP Automotive Council, DICON in the military and so many others. We have 13 sub-committees because we realised that the problem of the Nigeria Academy after 61 years of Nigeria as a country, the colonial masters gave us universities that were focused on producing manpower to take over from them. Not the kind of manpower that will solve our problems. It became increasingly unnecessary. In the modern era you want to see your children going for those professional courses that is changing the world with particular emphasis on the sciences, mathematics Engineering and Artificial Intelligence. At your levels, you are confused because your child will tell you how it works.

I made a case to the board of Trustees to create a department for R& D for Artificial Intelligence. The idea is that we have stayed for too long, publishing; they clap for you because you have 200 publications and you are acclaimed the greatest professor. But I say professing what? Theory? I am Agric scientist and somebody should be able to ask me, of all this your research that you did up to your PhD how has it impacted? In fact, I had my PhD in the best of platforms, including Nobel Prize. I started the preliminary research in Aberdeen Scotland, which has produced two Nobel prize winners and rounded off the PhD at Cambridge at the Clinical Vet department. As you pass through those halls, there are Nobel Prize winners that passed through them. At a stage Cambridge has produced more Nobel prize winners than the whole of France.

From there, I developed a deeper insight. I have collected my data, what do I use my data in coming back to Nigeria to solve a problem? That is when I developed what is called a Rumen fermentation model from my PhD work. When I came back, my supervising professor called me and said I was ahead of many in the field. It is simply because I was engaged all the time, I was in Cambridge for one year with the best of Researchers across the world. From some of the Seminars they gave, I discovered that I can add value to my data that I have collected. To break it down, the consumption of sorghum or maize stubs by goats, sheep and cattle could be used for methane. Methane today is one of the main gases green gas emissions, heating up the world. I asked myself what I could do to minimise the emission. I developed a fermentation model and even interpret the work within the physiology of the movement of the animal. My supervisors told me that though they were supervising me, I came with brilliant ideas that were ahead of so many people. What I discovered is that the sorghum out there that the cattle are grazing, I estimated that the data that I have from the Federal Ministry of Agric, I was able to get the quantity of sorghum Stuber available for cattle to consume, and I estimated and gave the figures of the methane that will come out and how we should contain it in the interest of the environment.

Assisting our Institutions to solve the COVID-19 pandemic

Today, I brought a team and released the sum of N1.25 billion. Let me tell you the first cluster that is being led by National Veterinary Research Institute NVRI, on vaccine production, with bias on veterinary vaccine against viral diseases as it were. The other one is improving the drug and vaccine production infrastructure in NVRI, Vom. The first partner working with them is NIMAR in Yaba, Lagos. Again, the DG for the National Research Institute for Chemical Technology, they were carefully brought for the cluster in veterinary. The other one is the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research on drug development, then also the Defence Industries research and the dairy research and development. As a matter of fact, Professor Lawal Bilbis of the University of Sokoto said we should give them eighteen months “we are going for candidate vaccine against COVID. He is respected by chemists in this country; we work together in the TETFUND journals subcommittee. These are the brilliant guys we have brought together.

Redeemers University has gone far also on DNA sequencing, which a component is leading for the characterisation of vaccine production. I can tell you that our universities have had capacities. The major problem is that they did not have the money for the research and proper investigations.

Honestly, what I don’t like is for somebody to imagine that Nigeria can’t produce vaccines. We have been producing vaccines. The truth is that we are not funding it. That is where my new intervention becomes relevant. We have been doing the wrong thing. We have not been funding research. Can you see the wisdom on why I am putting more money?

The summary of it is that we realised that inadequate funding has been the bane we are not moving forward. That is why the R&D of TETFUND has recommended a national R&D foundation that will be the largest funding basket for research in Nigeria. At the moment, TETFUND is the largest research funding entity. We are holding the largest research grant in Nigeria. I can tell you that we in Nigeria are not funding research. It is that poor hence we are making a case for the NRDF that can have up to $5 Billion annually. The Dangotes, the Innosons, the government agencies must have R&D funds prescribed with a certain percentage you cannot use that money for anything else. The industries, if they have that money they must go to the universities, the polytechnics and invite the best hands in research science, investigators and they are there.

We have gone far, a committee chaired by Prof Auwal Yadudu, they are giving me their report. It will go to the Ministry; the Federal Executive Council and Mr. President will approve before transmitting it to the National Assembly. If we have an NRDF emerging in the next few months, we would have solved a major problem. The knowledge economy in the 21st century is driven by research and where there is no research, there cannot be value addition. The Agric sector was before now contributing 41 percent. In the last few years, it is down to 25 percent. The physical contribution is just Five per cent which tells you that there is no value addition. No research injected to the Agric sector of the economy. You can check virtually all other sectors- solid minerals, even the oil sector. There is so much that we can unravel with the hydrocarbon or the fossils to do many things.

With research, you are able to come up with innovative products. That is what I have succeeded in doing which is the real paradigm shift. Today, go to the universities you will see that the attitude has changed. People are now more preoccupied. If we don’t do it, we cannot be ranked.

What are the criteria for ranking? First is the equality of faculty – the quality of the lecturers. No matter how brilliant a lecturer is, if there are no facilities for research, you go to a laboratory and the equipment thaw s bought 50 years ago when it is now soft touch, cutting edge equipment that is being used in other parts of the world, how can you be competitive?

The next option is the quality of research equipment. Most of the time, the VCs, the Rectors and the Provosts come, they want buildings, classes but when you go in there to commission some projects, they are empty because there is no equipment. Will the building speak for themselves if there are no equipment’s?

Today, TETFUND gave Molecular labs to the universities for research and clinical purposes so that they can conduct researches and use it to conduct analyses on patients

We just returned from Egypt and most of their laboratory equipment in the Agric research institutes; believe me they are the latest. I was there with the NUC Director General. We came out and were dumbfounded. We felt so bad because we know where we are coming from.

For me, I think to a large extent, I have succeeded in getting those that need to get the best and communicate to Nigeria. We have no other option than to get it right. 

When I came, however, I realised that too much emphasis has been placed on physical infrastructure. Yes, we needed classrooms, we need offices and before TETFUND came into being in 2011, there were no professorial offices. If you go to the universities, in fact, a professor’s office was similar to that of a messenger in any ministry, federal or state. without exaggeration, it was as bad as that. It is TETFUND that started the decent and befitting professorial offices and we prescribed and insisted on the must-haves in those offices. Today, virtually all public universities in Nigeria have professorial offices.

Worries About Ranking of Nigerian Universities

I will link that to infrastructural decay. The first question President Mohammed Buhari asked in 2015 is why are Nigerian universities poorly ranked?

When I came, I discovered that there was too much emphasis on physical infrastructure. It may also interest you to know that for research grants, there are two categories – Institution Based Research (IBR) with a ceiling of Two Million Naira and the National Research Fund which is centrally controlled at TETFUND. The IBR is given to institutions to manage largely for basic research. For applied research which we call problem-solving research, it has to be larger which is N50 million. The problem, however, is that for eight years from 2011 to 2019 only four billion naira was committed for a research grants of all Nigerian Universities. I did not want that any longer. We had more money to build classrooms, lecture theatres, iconic Senate Buildings as if we are competing with the ministries with elegant buildings. What about the content?

I changed all that as I said we should not be working on seed money research grants to annual research grants, a case I presented to the board of trustees and they approved. In 2019, we started with five billion naira, higher than all the eight years since the fund was started put together. Last year, we raised it to N7.5 billion all at my discretion. This year, it is N8.5 billion. I actually wanted N10 billion but the chairman of the board cracked a joke that “if we leave the Executive Secretary, he will carry all the money for research but we politicians also want to see buildings.” He, however, said that if they stop me, I would resign because I had not met the purpose I set for myself.

Expected Outcome or impact of the interventions

As I speak, the NRF, we are concluding on software to measure the impact of all NRF from when it started, we are now evaluating and will soon publish it. That of the IBR, at the institutional level, we will also proceed and see how we make it available to Nigerians.

It may also interest you to know that it is my idea that we should harvest all postgraduate thesis and PhDs in all universities in Nigeria and dematerialize them, which simply means electronic copies or version and we have an inventory. We are handling only PG programmes for now but will come down to Bachelor’s degrees. In the next 12 months we should conclude that project. People are asking questions, simply because they are not informed about the technology. For instance, I defended my PhD in 1997 I can tell you that if I had electronic copy, it will be available on the touch of a button but dematerializing it is very easy with the technology we have now. We are putting more money on research. It is much easier now to engage the academia in research than in politics. Very soon, we are hoping that with more money for research, the lecturers will have some change from the research grants in their pockets. I know what I am saying because there is an administration component.

As a researcher, if you are hardworking, you will never be poor. If you have watched me, I have always talked about problem-solving research. If we do not engage in problem solving, if we want to characterize and interpret Pythagoras theory for the sake of it, we should be talking about how it is being applied for the content and to solve the problem of the day. Let it be applied so that we know the problems and solve them.

The Paradigm Shift

I can tell you that the national Institute for Security Studies has invited me to share experiences on the paradigm shift. I don’t think I need to look at any script because I sleep and think about it. For too long, the academia, our universities, remember that the Universities are traditionally and historically the leaders in research. That cannot change and it has remained so. For Industries, if you see the Research and Development Funding Committee the Minister for Education inaugurated September 24, 2020, we deliberately constituted 154 members made up of Nigerians in Nigeria and in the Diaspora. Some of the best of researchers and academia, many from the industries, institutes and relevant centers of excellence of Nigeria are there. I don’t know if you are aware? When you through that list, you will see the speacialisation, the purpose and mandate of each individual. We involve the Dg of NASENI, NOTAP Automotive Council, DICON in the Military and so many others. We have 13 sub committees because we realised that the problem of the Nigeria Academy after 61 years of Nigeria as a country, the colonial masters gave us universities that were focused on producing manpower to take over from them. Not the kind of manpower that will solve our problems. It became increasingly unnecessary. In the modern era you want to see your children going for those professional courses that is changing the world with particular emphasis on the sciences, mathematics Engineering and Artificial Intelligence. At your levels, you are confused because your child will tell you how it works.

I made a case to the board of Trustees to create a department for R& D for Artificial Intelligence. The idea is that we have stayed for too long, publishing, they clap for you because you have 200 publications and you are acclaimed the greatest Professor. But I say Professing what? Theory? I am Agric scientist ands somebody should be able to ask me, of all this your research that you did up to your PhD how has it impacted? In fact, I had my PhD in the best of platforms including Nobel Prize. I started the preliminary research in Aberdeen Scotland which has produced two Nobel prize winners and rounded off the PhD at Cambridge at the Clinical Vet department. As you pass through those halls, there are Nobel Prize winners that passed through them. At a stage Cambridge has produced more Nobel prize winners than the whole of France.

From there, I developed a deeper insight. I have collected my data, what do I use my data in coming back to Nigeria to solve a problem? That is when I developed what is called a Rumen fermentation model from my PhD work. When I came back, my supervising professor called me and said I was ahead of many in the field. It is simply because I was engaged all the time, I was in Cambridge for one year with the best of Researchers across the world. From some of the Seminars they gave, I discovered that I can add value to my data that I have collected. To break it down, the consumption of sorghum or maize stubs by goats, sheep and cattle could be used for methane. Methane today is one of the main gases green gas emission heating up the world. I asked myself what could I do to minimize the emission? I developed a fermentation model and even interpret the work within the physiology of the movement of the animal. My supervisors told me that though they were supervising me, I came with brilliant ideas that were ahead of so many people. What I discovered is that the sorghum out there that the cattle are grazing, I estimated that the data that I have from the Federal Ministry of Agric, I was able to get the quantity of sorghum Stuber available for cattle to consume, and I estimated and gave the figures of the methane that will come out and how we should contain it in the interest of the environment.

Assisting our Institutions to solve the COVID-19 pandemic

Today, I brought a team and released the sum of N1.25 billion. Let me tell you the first cluster that is being led by National Veterinary Research Institute NVRI, on vaccine production, with bias on veterinary vaccine against viral diseases as it were. The other one is improving the drug and vaccine production infrastructure in NVRI, Vom. The first partner working with them is NIMAR in Yaba, Lagos. Again, the DG for the National Research Institute for Chemical Technology, they were carefully brought for the cluster in veterinary. The other one is the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research on drug development, then also the Defence Industries research and the dairy research and development. As a matter of fact, Professor Lawal Bilbis of the University of Sokoto said we should give them eighteen months “we are going for candidate vaccine against COVID. He is respected by chemists in this country, we work together in the TETFUND journals subcommittee. These are the brilliant guys we have brought together.

Redeemers University has gone far also on DNA sequencing which is a component leading for the characterization of vaccine production. I can tell you that our universities have had capacities. The major problem is that they did not have the money for the research and proper investigations.

Honestly, what I don’t like is for somebody to imagine that Nigeria can’t produce vaccines. We have been producing vaccines. The truth is that we are not funding it. That is where my new intervention becomes relevant. We have been doing the wrong thing. We have not been funding research. Can you see the wisdom on why I am putting more money?

The summary of it is that we realised that inadequate funding has been the bane we are not moving forward. that is why the RD of TETFUND has recommended a national R&D foundation that will be the largest funding basket for research in Nigeria. At the moment, TETFUND is the largest research funding entity. We are holding the largest research grant in Nigeria. I can tell you that we in Nigeria are not funding research. It is that poor hence we are making a case for the NRDF that can have up to $5 Billion annually. The Dangotes, the Innosons, the government agencies must have R&D funds prescribed with a certain percentage you cannot use that money for anything else. The industries, if they have that money they must go to the universities, the polytechnics and invite the best hands in research science, investigators and they are there.

We have gone far, a committee chaired by Prof Auwal Yadudu, they are giving me their report. It will go to the Ministry; the Federal Executive Council and Mr. President will approve before transmitting it to the National Assembly. If we have an NRDF emerging in the next few months, we would have solved a major problem. The knowledge economy in the 21st century is driven by research and where there is no research, there cannot be value addition. The Agric sector was before now contributing 41 percent. In the last few years, it is down to 25 percent. The physical contribution is just Five per cent which tells you that there is no value addition. No research injected to the Agric sector of the economy. You can check virtually all other sectors- solid minerals, even the oil sector. There is so much that we can unravel with the hydrocarbon or the fossils to do many things.

With research, you are able to come up with innovative products. That is what I have succeeded in doing which is the real paradigm shift. Today, go to the universities you will see that the attitude has changed. People are now more preoccupied. If we don’t do it, we cannot be ranked.

What are the criteria for ranking? First is the equality of faculty – the quality of the lecturers. No matter how brilliant a lecturer is, if there are no facilities for research, you go to a laboratory and the equipment thaw s bought 50 years ago when it is now soft touch, cutting edge equipment that is being used in other parts of the world, how can you be competitive?

The next option is the quality of research equipment. Most of the time, the VCs, the Rectors and the Provosts come, they want buildings, classes but when you go in there to commission some projects, they are empty because there is no equipment. Will the building speak for itself if there is no equipments?

Today, TETFUND gave Molecular labs to the universities for research and clinical purposes so that they can conduct researches and use it to conduct analyses on patients

We just returned from Egypt and most of their laboratory equipment in the Agric research institutes; believe me they are the latest. I was there with the NUC Director-General. We came out and were dumbfounded. We felt so bad because we know where we are coming from.

For me, I think to a large extent, I have succeeded in getting those that need to get the best and communicate to Nigeria. We have no other option than to get it right.