By Sola Ogundipe

In contributing its quota towards ensuring that Nigerian drug makers do not just make drugs considered safe enough for Nigeria, but produce medication that will put Nigeria in a respectable position on the world map, the Bank of Industry,  BOI, Nigeria’s oldest and most successful development finance institution, is injecting life into the nation’s ailing local pharmaceutical manufacturing sector.

Disclosing this last week during a facility tour of Swiss Pharma Nigeria Limited, and May & Baker Nigeria Plc., the Managing Director/CEO, Bank of Industry, Mr. Rasheed Olaoluwa, said through its line of credit and other sector-defined interventions, the Bank of Industry has enabled the two local drug makers attain the World Health Organisation, WHO, prequalification for Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMPs), while positioning them for WHO pre-qualification of their products.

Olaoluwa, who led a high-powered entourage of the Bank’s management on the facility visits, said by setting up indigenous pharmaceutical companies to compete favourably in  international  bidding processes for medicines supplies in relevant global health programmes, products from the  BOI-assisted companies can now pass WHO pre-qualification, which will then make them export-worthy, and position Nigeria to begin to enjoy the huge international pharmaceutical market, where countries like the US, Germany, China, and India currently hold sway.

His words: “Two years ago, the Bank of Industry granted a facility to indigenous pharmaceutical companies including Swiss Pharmaceutical company and May & Baker Nigeria Plc, to upgrade with a view to becoming certified by the World Health Organisation, WHO, with respect to the current Good Manufacturing Practice GFMP which is an international code.

“This visit is to see how much impact the companies have made utilising the facility. We are pleased the companies have become fully certified and concluded the upgrading processes. We took a tour of the premises, and I was amazed at the amount of efforts and investments that have gone in to assuring the highest quality in terms of the air quality, quality of products from raw materials coming in, the handling, the processing, the packaging, the entire process is international standard.

“Swipha is the first country in W Africa to obtain the WHO prequalification. When we supported it, we actually supported six pharmaceutical companies. Others are at various stages of being certified internationally. By the time they attain that international standard, the consumers as well as medical doctors can have assurance that the drugs they are using from this company are of international quality.

“The second thing is that, by the time we begin to reduce our imports, the pressure on our foreign reserves will be less and we can actually begin to grow our foreign reserves by exporting some of these products. I expect all pharmaceutical companies to sustain the current effort to attain international quality so we can become exporters of drugs,” he concluded

Further, Olaoluwa said the next stage is to go into product specific certification. He explained that the Bank of Industry was already in discussion with the companies to ensure that also and whatever support that can be rendered will be offered.