As the world is battling with the Coronavirus pandemic, Oyo State Government, University of Ibadan (UI), traditional herbal practitioners and other interested bodies and individuals are collaborating to come up with products that will cure the disease and prevent its spread.
The bodies are of the opinion that it was high time Africans began to look for a home-grown solution to the COVID-19 virus, which is a white man disease.
In his speech at a meeting held in UI to find a lasting solution to Covid-19 pandemic in Nigeria, Governor Seyi Makinde of State, who spoke through his Executive Assistant on Administration, Reverend Idowu Ogedengbe stated that the state government was ready to adopt a gown and town approach in getting a scientific validation that is globally accepted as solutions to novel Coronavirus.
He urged that all efforts should be made not only to contain the virus but to equally defeat it so that normalcy could returns to the state and the country.
“We already know people that have the products, samples, mixtures, and solutions but we don’t just want to take it on the surface and start promoting it. We want to first subject the products to scientific validation so that by the time our virologists, botanists and other professionals in the university Community look at those solutions, we will come up with something that the global community would be able to benefit from. We want to really lead the pace for others to emulate. We are not just looking at the possibility of fighting the spread of the virus. We also want to ensure that we stop it. We defeat and subdue it. In Madagascar now, life is back to normal; their children are now going to schools. We want that also and we want to start it from Oyo State”, he explained.
UI Vice Chancellor, Professor Abel Idowu Olayinka, who assured that the institution, would collaborate with the Tradition al Herbal Practitioners to find a solution to Coronavirus said, “We also want to thank the Oyo State government for facilitating this process. This is the second meeting we have held. We know there will be a solution soon. We are even going to go beyond the progress that has been made in Madagascar. You would have heard that Madagascar is trying to collaborate with South Africa. In Science, if you say you have the cure to something, you have to let the whole world know the protocol you have followed and, if possible, you can publish it in a scientific journal so that people can see the steps you have taken for replication. So, we know our people are up to the task with support from government both at the state and federal level. I am also happy that NAFDAC is here with us”.
At the meeting, the representative of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mrs Edo Priye promised that the agency would give maximum support to herbal producers to find a solution to the pandemic.
Urging the committee to get the agency the products for proper examination, Priye assured that NAFDAC would expedite the registration facility of whatever products they come up with.
Baale Ekotedo, Chief Taye Oyerinde, who spoke on behalf of the traditional herbal practitioners, Chief Taye Oyerinde pointed out that herbal medicine was the most realistic solution for the treatment of COVID-19.
Stressing that herbal practitioners have drugs that could cure the virus, he noted that Nigeria needed fire brigade approach to cure Coronavirus.
