An institute established
more than 36 years ago to develop drugs, biological products and pharmaceutical
raw materials from indigenous resources in Nigeria is presently hampered by
lack of funds.
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Director-General
NIPRD, Karyinus Gamaniel.
|
Due
to the paucity of funds, the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and
Development, NIPRD, located in the Idu Industrial Layout of Abuja, has been
without electricity for over nine months since the Abuja Electricity Distribution
Company cut off power supply over the failure of the institute to settle its
debts.
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Admin and
Finance block of NIPRD
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During
visits to the institute by our reporter on Wednesday, the place was
in darkness due to absence of electricity. Its Director General, Karyinus Gamaniel,
said the lack of electricity was an evidence of the challenges facing the
institute.
He
said although it needs electricity to operate, it has no fund to settle its
electricity bills.
“This
institution has not had power supply for over nine months. Power Holding
Company of Nigeria (PHCN) packed up the power connections of the institution
since early part of 2016.”
The
professor of pharmacology explained that in the past few months, the institute
has tried to improvise with a generator.
“We
did a kind of rationalization for the past two months in which by 10 a.m. the
generator supplies power for few hours. Prior to this, no power supply in the
institution”, he said.
The
Director-General added that 95% of the challenges of the institution is due to
underfunding as overhead expenses are hardly met.
He
added that budgetary allocation to NIPRD is never enough, and even the budgeted
sum only partially disbursed.
A
review of the health ministry’s budgets shows that the institute was allocated ₦922.6
million in 2014, ₦716.7 million in 2015, ₦675.1 million in 2016, while ₦711.6
million has been proposed in the 2017 budget currently before the National
Assembly
Mr.
Gamaniel, however, said the allocations, though not enough, were never fully
released to his agency.
He
said the situation had gotten worse, adding that whereas about 80% of the
appropriated funds used to be released, only a fraction of what was
appropriated had been made available in the past three years.
He
said the reason why the public has not heard of the achievements of the
institution is due to poor funding.
“It’s
not like the institution is not really working, we are focusing on our
priority. People
don’t know much about the institution because communication itself is not
cheap. We need adequate funding to do that,” he said.
Efforts
to contact the health ministry on the poor funding of the institute were unsuccessful.
The ministry’s spokesperson, Boade Akinola, did not pick or return calls to her
phone nor respond to a text message.
NIPRD
was established in 1980 to develop drugs, biological products and
pharmaceutical raw materials from indigenous resources.
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