Mojisola Adeyeye, Director-General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has expressed her aspiration for Nigeria to start producing human vaccines before her tenure concludes in 2027.
Gatekeepers News reports that in a statement released on Sunday, Adeyeye emphasized that local vaccine manufacturing is crucial for national preparedness against future pandemics and to reduce reliance on foreign supplies.
She said, “It will be exciting news for me, because during the pandemic we were too dependent on foreign countries. We couldn’t get any vaccines unless from outside the country. That was when the preparedness for epidemics became a reality for us.”
While Nigeria has been producing veterinary vaccines since 1924, Adeyeye stressed the urgency of establishing human vaccine production to prevent being unprepared during future health crises.
She said, “During the pandemic, we ran up and down to see whether we could start manufacturing vaccines, but things did not work out.”
“We must decide as a country that we will not be too dependent on others. We will manufacture our own. That’s why I pray that before my tenure is over, we will be manufacturing vaccines.”
To support this goal, NAFDAC reorganised its internal structure in November 2024, separating the vaccines, biologics, and medical devices directorate from the drug registration and regulatory affairs directorate to align with international best practices.
She said, “When I came to NAFDAC, we had the registration and regulatory affairs directorate, which was in charge of registration of all NAFDAC-regulated products, meaning the registration of food, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices, herbal medicines, vaccines, veterinary products, pesticides, and other finished chemicals was under one Director, which made the system susceptible to ineffectiveness and corruption.”
“If you want good governance and leadership, you must have governable units, governable groups. One director overseeing seven regulated products will not achieve the necessary efficiency. That was why we knew that we had to separate vaccines and medical devices from the Drug Registration and Regulatory Affairs Directorate.”
Adeyeye also highlighted NAFDAC’s progress in achieving global regulatory standards, noting that the agency attained Maturity Level 3 (ML3) status in 2022 for medicines and imported vaccines, an essential requirement for World Health Organization (WHO) pre-qualification for vaccine production.
She said, “We are working towards getting our ML3 for locally manufactured vaccines. We already have ML3 for medicines and imported vaccines since 2022.”
“WHO came last year, they saw everything that we have as a regulatory agency on indicators for vaccine Lot Release; we have almost satisfied everything except that the country must manufacture vaccines because it’s when we manufacture vaccines that we can do local facility inspections.”
