N40 billion covid 19 fund not utilized for research–Dr. Theophilus Ndubuaku
The National Secretary-General of the Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions, Dr. Theophilus Ndubuaku, has blamed Nigeria’s failure to develop on lack of political will to fund research and research institutions. The secretary-general lamented that not one thin dime out of the N40 billion raised by the private sector to combat the dreaded COVID 19 last year was used to conduct research into the pandemic, adding that it is only through research findings that the country can be saved from its present troubles and steady drift into anarchy.
Dr. Ndubuaku made this revelation Tuesday, in Abuja, at a press meeting organized to discuss the cause of insecurity and other socioeconomic and health challenges rocking the nation.
The ASURI chief executive who is pushing for the re-enactment of a research and innovation bill in the National Assembly said that unless research funding is established and the research council urgently inaugurated to probe into the underlying causes of insecurity and national disorientation, the country will not find its footing on the paved path to sustainable development.
He said that the bill which had been reviewed for the fourteenth time this year has been on the drawing board since the early 1960s, adding that countries that had pursued similar bills in those bygone years have now moved from a Third World status to a First World, developed nations through proper coordination and funding of research efforts and the research institutions.
Ndubuaku who also is a member of the central working committee/national executive council of the Nigeria Labour Congress has threatened to draw the attention of the international community if the government fails to concede to ASURI demands which he believed would provoke purposive research into national problems.
He said, “When the government raised N40 billion to fight the dreaded Coronavirus decease last year, we wrote them and said, put 10 percent of that money for research. But we didn’t see the money in research. I can tell that the research institutes involved in research have not seen the COVID 19 money for research. And they are there saying that we have the capacity to research the disease, and they are announcing it to the press saying that they have even developed some drugs that can work against COID 19. But no fund has got to the institutes yet.
“You see, just this issue for COVID 19 has shown how far the neglect for research has gone in this country. If during the pandemic, we refuse to fund research, then there is no other way to say how neglected research efforts have been in Nigeria.”
Ndubuaku said that it is UNESCO that is sponsoring the review of the national science and technology policy this year for the fourteenth time in the National Assembly, and threatened to inform the world body that the federal government has refused to put in place the major component of
