By Emeka Odogwu
Ndigbo are, no doubt, very creative people. Though they are often misunderstood, the ingenuity and dogged enterprising spirit of an Igbo man is second to none. They do not wallow in self-pity or inferiority complex.
The recent exploits of five Igbo maidens from Regina Pacis Secondary School Onitsha is challenging. They represented Nigeria and Africa at the World Technovation Challenge in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco and returned home with the Gold Medal, beating other youngsters across the World.
A few weeks later, four boys from Saint John’s Science and Technical School, Alor won a bronze medal in Tunisia at the African Science and Technology competition (IFES)
Again, the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) has broken a jinx of electricity generation by using organic waste to install 100KVA Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) gasification plant for its Nsukka campus. The project is the first of its kind in Nigeria. In addition, UNN found Cholera vaccine, which has helped in curbing the spread of the illness.
The ingenuity of Ndigbo came to bear during the war with the building of the Uli airstrip. They refined petrol from variety of non-fossil fuels, including palm fruits; manufactured surface to surface war missiles known as Ogbunigwe and converted commercial planes to fighter jets, as well as building the first Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) in Black Africa, nicknamed Red Devil.
In the same vein, an Igbo entrepreneur and business magnate, Chief Innocent Chukwuma is the founder of Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing plant at Nnewi; Nigeria’s first indigenous automobile manufacturing company.
Another Igbo man, Ezekiel Izuogu, constructed the first all African car, which BBC codenamed ‘African dream machine’. Izuogu’s car got clean bill of health from the late Abacha’s 12 man panel; that was five years before India built their Indi. The Federal Government then, represented by Oladipo Diya, promised Izuogu a grant of two hundred and thirty-five million naira before over 20 foreign ambassadors. Regrettably, that grant is still a mirage till today. And then we have Professor Maduike Ezeibe of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. In February 2017, he announced that he had found a cure for HIV/AIDS. Ezeibe, from Isiala Ngwa, Abia state equally invented drug for bird flu in 2008.
The HIV/AIDS drugs have been used on over 500 HIV/AIDS patients, including a Jamaican and they have all been confirmed free. The results of the laboratory tests were presented and accepted at the 2015 World Virology conference in Atlanta, as well as the 2016 Antonio Conference in Texas.
However, the Director-General, NACA, Dr. Sani Aliyu, and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, in a joint statement dismissed the claims by Ezeibe as untenable. They said Ezeibe did not get clearance from them to conduct the research, but confirmed that the drugs healed “evidently vulnerable patients’’ who gave their consent to be administered the drugs.
However, the Senate intervened and the Federal Government set up a joint committee to investigate Ezeibe’s claims. They were convinced. The committee came up with the recommendation that funds be made available to Ezeibe to carry out more research into his findings.
The Federal Government, through the Ministry of Science and Technology, honoured Ezeibe as an inventor last year, with a grant of mere three hundred and fifty thousand naira. Ezeibe’s research is at its last stage, which required testing the drug on about 300,000 HIV patients at the cost of N71 per patient per day and needed funds for production of the drugs.
Nigeria should begin to celebrate her own. According to the Professor, the two minerals used in developing the drug–aluminum silicate, and magnesium silicate are in large deposits in Abia State. He even challenged those doubting his claims to engage him in a scientific debate or assemble experts for verification.
A leading diagnostic laboratory, Seeding Labs in the US, even chose Ezeibe, as a personality to celebrate. The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Seeding Labs, Nina Dudnik, extolled the don for “giving hope to the world.”If international bodies, including those in the USA, are paying compliments to the Nigerian HIV/AIDS medicine invented by Prof Ezeibe, why not Nigeria?
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