MINISTER of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu has urged members of the Institute of Chartered Chemists of Nigeria, ICCON, to abide by the ethics of the profession and promote its growth and development within the context of national development and international best practices.

Chukwu who gave the charge at the 6th Induction ceremony and 5th Annual General Business Meeting of the Institute in Abuja noted that the importance of ICCON in the overall development of the health care delivery system in the country cannot be over emphasized through the Permanent Secretary, Mrs Fatima Bamidele.

President of ICCON, Prof. Abdullahi Abdu Zuru said the Institute was set up in 1993 to regulate the practice of the chemistry and chemist in the country by setting appropriate standards and guidelines. It also accredits and monitors the training institutions which produce chemist in Nigeria and this he said the institute has achieved since its set up.

In his induction lecture, Managing Director of NAJCO Laboratories, Lagos Hon. Niyi Akinyugha said Nigeria is where it is today despite past developmental programmes of the government, because of poor technical capacity and lack of political will of leaders to implement some people oriented policies and programmes.

“Nigeria is not bereft of ideas; we have various development programmes in the past, but today with all these programmes what do we have to show for it? Nothing, and these are due to following reasons; we have witnessed a lot of political instability, non diversification of economy from oil, weak structures, weak management capacity and poor technical capacity”. He said.

He challenged the Institute to always raise the best ethical standard of the practice of the profession for the members not to be sub-changed by quarks.

Akinyugha noted that the present instrument evolved by the Institute to tackle quark is not strong enough, calling for the review of the law to give more bite to the struggle.

He urged the new inductees who are about 145 in number, to keep themselves abreast of the latest research in the industry and be adaptive in any circumstance they find themselves within the various strata in the society.