By Edward T. Dibiana
The leadership of the Senate and the Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare and Communicable Diseases, will today, Monday, December 21, 2020, meet with the Minister of Health, the Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, the Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, and other relevant authorities, over procurement of COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria, 365Daily has exclusively gathered.
This disclosure was made by Senator Chukwuka Utazi, Chairman, Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare and Communicable Diseases, in an interview with 365Daily.
The issue of vaccine for COVID-19 has remained a controversial topic in Nigeria since the outbreak of the virus in the country earlier this year because of several conjectures about its safety, availability, efficacy and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories associated with it.
These concerns and the issues of possible funding, Senator Utazi said, necessitated the meeting in order for the Senate, as the representative of the people, to seek answers to the important questions of safety of the vaccines. It is also expected to touch on what the authorities saddled with the responsibility of managing the pandemic in Nigeria are doing to ensure that Nigerians get the best of result, especially with the second wave of the outbreak already hitting the nation, he added.
Another key agenda for the meeting, 365Daily was told, is how government would urgently raise the required funds for the procurement and also make necessary contacts with relevant international agencies and manufacturers of the scarce vaccine to ensure that Nigeria is not left out.
“Three days ago, the Senate resolved and mandated the Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare, in a joint committee meeting of Health, to spearhead the issue of interrogating the government agencies as it concerns the procurement of vaccines for the country,” Senator Utazi revealed.
But because of the importance and seriousness of the matter, the Senate, he continued, later resolved that its leadership would join the committee in the meeting with the relevant agencies to tackle every issue relating to the vaccine and other measures aimed at controlling the virus in Nigeria.
According to Senator Utazi, “As soon as Senate made that resolution, I took immediate action to write to the Minister of Health and all other agencies under it with the coordinator of PTF, and his team, the Director-General of NCDC, FCDC, Executive Director, CEO of National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, to invite them to the meeting.”
He further assured Nigerians of the Legislature’s preparedness to see that everything needed is provided for Nigeria to procure the important vaccine as soon as possible, adding that “we are working hard to make sure that we get things working for our people. First of all, is the vaccine there? If it is there, is it also safe for use by our people?
“I am very careful, by not trying to solve a problem and end up compounding it, because of what has played out in the past about the politics of vaccines and the alleged effort to reduce population by the western world countries in the third world countries. So we have looked at all these things and we are considering them.”
Another important issue, according to the Lawmaker who represents Enugu North Senatorial District, is the 2021 budget, because the “issue of vaccine came when we were almost done with the budget and with my discussion with the health agencies, since yesterday and today, they are all discussing how we need to find money and we agreed at the Senate and National Assembly.
”Those of us in health are interfacing with our leadership that this is something that is very urgent and we must do something about it. The Executive Director, CEO of National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, and the Director General of NCDC and all of us are all making efforts in this regard.
“As I speak to you, the budget for the procurement of the vaccine has already been gotten, we have an idea of what it is going to take but I won’t mention it here because we are still working on it, but the effort is ongoing and we are working hard to achieve this. We have already started discussing with the Senate President on how we can tinker with this budget before Monday to ensure that we have adequate provision in it for the vaccine, even if it means striking out certain other projects to ensure that this money is in the budget for the vaccine.”
But the Senate leadership appears to be in favour of a different approach as revealed by Utazi.
“I took this idea to him ( Senate President), and he told me, ‘No, we don’t need to do that, as the budget has reached that stage. Let’s not go there and try to put a spanner in the works but what we should do is articulate our opinion at the estimate of what it will cost us to buy enough vaccines that would go round the country and make sure that the health of our citizens are protected and once we do that, the leadership is going to interface with the Executive to do a special supplementary estimate purely for this, which everyone is concerned about.’
”That is the direction we are heading to and our people are working round the clock for this to work out.
“I spoke to the coordinator of the task force on COVID-19 and the Executive Director of National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, including the Director-General of the NCDC and the Minister of Health, in order to come up with an estimate and once we are done with the passage of the budget.
”We will be returning with a supplementary estimate to take care of the vaccine. So we are assuring the country that we are working and there is no loopholes from the National Assembly in terms of making sure we have enough preparation to fund our health emergencies.”