A team of professors from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria says it has found a cure for COVID-19. Speaking exclusively with Daily Trust on Wednesday, one of the leading researchers, Professor Haruna Abdu Kaita, said the COVID-19 remedy was developed from local plants that are available in different parts of Nigeria. This is coming few days after President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the importation of COVID Organics, a herbal syrup being fronted by Andry Rajoelina, the president of Madagascar, as both a vaccine for the prevention and cure of COVID-19. Local cure for COVID-19 at advanced stage, says Ooni COVID-19: FG lists Lagos, FCT, Kano, Ogun, Kaduna, Sokoto for WHO drug trials President Buhari’s decision had attracted criticism from different quarters in Nigeria with the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria describing it as an insult on the country’s group of pharmacists, scientists, and researchers.
He said when the medication is made public, the herbs used would also be made public “for the sake of transparency.” “We are not businessmen; therefore, we would not hide anything to the public. “We will disclose all the plants we used in developing the medication. “We will do this for scientists across the world to scrutinise our remedy and come up with any challenge; particularly regarding the safety of the medication. “What I mean is that, everything we used will be made public for scientific scrutiny.” Kaita said the only thing that his team will not disclose is the proportion of different plants used in the production of the anti-COVID-19 medicine. This, he said, would be kept as their intellectual property. He added that an elder statesman and former Vice-Chancellor of the ABU, Professor Abdullahi Mustapha, is also part of the team.
