NAFDAC DG: I pray Nigeria begins vaccine manufacturing before my tenure elapses

Mojisola Adeyeye, director general of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), says she hopes Nigeria will begin production of human vaccines before the end of her tenure.

Adeyeye’s tenure elapses in 2027.

According to a statement by the agency on Sunday, Adeyeye said local manufacturing is essential to ensure the country’s preparedness for future pandemics and reduce dependence on foreign donors.

“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,” she said.

The NAFDAC boss explained that although Nigeria has produced veterinary vaccines since 1924, it must now take urgent steps towards manufacturing human vaccines to avoid being caught unprepared in the event of another pandemic.

“During the pandemic, we ran up and down to see whether we could start manufacturing vaccines, but things did not work out,” she said.

“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.”

Adeyeye said NAFDAC has taken significant steps towards achieving that goal by separating its vaccines, biologics, and medical devices directorate from the drug registration and regulatory affairs directorate in November 2024 to align with international best practices.

“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,” she said.

“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.”

The DG said NAFDAC achieved Maturity Level 3 (ML3) status in 2022 for medicines and imported vaccines, a major requirement for countries seeking World Health Organisation (WHO) pre-qualification for vaccine production.

“We are working towards getting our ML3 for locally manufactured vaccines. We already have ML3 for medicines and imported vaccines since 2022,” she said.

“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.”