Nigeria Needs Coordinated Research And Development Driven National Program – Prof. Bogoro
The Executive Secretary Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Professor Suleiman Elias Bogoro has advocated for a well-coordinated, decentralised Research and Development R&D driven national Program on dairy and livestock production in Nigeria
Bogoro said that Nigeria presently spends a whooping sum of $1.3 billion annually on importation of powdered milk to be reconstituted into various products.
Speaking as a Keynote Presenter at the 9th Joint Annual meeting of Animal Science Association of Nigeria, ASAN and Nigeria Institute of Animal Science (NIAS), in Abuja, the TETFUND boss, who spoke on the theme; ‘Reclaiming Nigeria’s Laggard Livestock Subsector: A Modern Dairy Value Chain In Perspectives’, noted that available statistics indicate that Nigeria produces 526,000 litres of Dairy products as against the demand for about 1.2 million litres per annum.
The solution to this, he said is to mount a sustainable campaign for the production of dairy products using the intervention of R&D to improve the dairy Value Chain and save alot of revenue for the country.
Prof. Bogoro therefore challenged Food Scientists to explore the use of milk and Milk derivatives to enhance the quality of our national diets, meals and recipes.
According to him; “There exists nowadays biotechnologies and digital solutions that can fast track the development of the Nigeria’s dairy Sector towards being globally competitive”.
Bogoro said that it is imperative to establish a private sector led but government supported livestock Specie/breeds for sustainable livestock development.
He called on the relevant institutions to fast track the completion and signing of the National Livestock Breeding programme to ensure effective regulatory national framework for the practice of livestock breeding in the country.
