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Feature: Nigerian Gets CRI Recognition For Cancer Cure

Published

7 years ago

August 28, 2019

Nigeria has lost several persons, including well-known and admirable personalities to cancer. This list includes former Director-General, DG of the National Institute of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, Prof. Dora Akunyili; former First Lady, Hajiya Mariam Babangida; wife of former Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Aliere Alaibe, and legal icon and human rights activist, Gani Fawehinmi (SAN). Some say the death of these highly placed individuals acted as some form of wake up call to Nigeria that indeed cancer is silently killing many of its citizens.

A first and obvious breakthrough was recorded when on August 16, the Cancer Research Institute, CRI, a non-profit organisation founded in the United States of America in1953 and dedicated exclusively to advancing immunotherapy to treat, control, and cure all cancers wrote to a Nigerian researcher, Ben Amodu, recognising the fact that his research has the potentials to change the narrative in cancer cure.

“We believe your research has the potential to change many lives for the wellbeing of millions suffering especially in Africa where it (cancer) is prevalent. We also believe your products can qualify for our $175,000 Immunotherapy advancement Grant for immunotherapy which is geared at propelling such meticulous research into full-blown treatments available for disbursements” the NCI stated.

The NCI is requesting letters of intent for its Clinic and Laboratory Integration Programme, CLIP, offering grants to qualified scientists who are working to explore clinically relevant questions aimed at improving the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapies. The grant will support basic, pre-clinical, and translational research that will provide information that can be directly applied to optimizing cancer immunotherapy in the clinic.

Cancer has become a huge menace in today’s society. The name cancer is now associated with death. The treatment is usually expensive, in addition to other side effects. For instance, ‘Chemotherapy’ is not only painful but causes loss of hair. It is a system whereby drugs are injected into the patients’ veins. October has been tagged as the ‘breast cancer awareness month.’ This is in a bid to create awareness worldwide.

According to the National Cancer Institute, Cancer is the name given to a collection of related diseases. In all types of cancer, some of the body’s cells begin to divide without stopping and spread into surrounding tissues. Cancer can start almost anywhere in the human body, which is made up of trillions of cells. Normally, human cells grow and divide to form new cells as the body needs them. When cells grow old or become damaged, they die, and new cells take their place.

When cancer develops, however, this orderly process breaks down. As cells become more and more abnormal, old or damaged cells survive when they should die, and new cells form when they are not needed. These extra cells can divide without stopping and may form growths called tumors. Many cancers form solid tumors, which are masses of tissue.

Cancers of the blood, such as leukemias, generally do not form solid tumors. Cancerous tumors are malignant, which means they can spread into, or invade nearby tissues. In addition, as these tumors grow, some cancer cells can break off and travel to distant places in the body through the blood or the lymph system and form new tumors far from the original tumor. Unlike malignant tumors, benign tumors do not spread into, or invade nearby tissues. Benign tumors can sometimes be quite large. When removed, they usually don’t grow back, but malignant tumors do.

According to research, each cancer is thought to first start from one abnormal cell. What happens is that certain vital genes that control how cells divide and multiply are damaged or altered. This makes the cell abnormal. If the abnormal cell survives it may multiply out of control into a cancerous (malignant) tumor.

Experts say we all have a risk of developing cancer. Many cancers seem to develop for no apparent reason; certain risk factors are known to increase the chance that one or more of your cells will become abnormal and lead to cancer. Risk factors include the following: lifestyle e.g. smoking, lack of physical activity; diets, certain types of infections; such as human papillomaviruses, HPV, Helicobacter pylori, and hepatitis B, HBV, and hepatitis C viruses, HCV, and environmental exposures to different types of chemicals and radiation.

The NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre which was commissioned recently by President Muhammadu Buhari opened for patients on May 1. The ultra-modern equipment has undergone the necessary calibrations and fine-tuned to comply with international standards before going to operate. “The rigorous steps are a must before international and local regulatory bodies can certify any high-end irradiating equipment for use on patients,” the CMD, Prof. Chris Bode said.

He also disclosed that the center, financed by the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, NSIA, is designed in compliance with international best practices while requisite personnel including radiotherapists, oncologists, physicists, and nurses are currently undergoing conversion training in readiness for the smooth take-off of services at the center. He added that the multi-billion cancer center was established as a joint-venture partnership between the NSIA and LUTH to address the lack of adequate and comprehensive cancer treatment and management in the country.

Cancer can be treated by surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, targeted therapy (including immunotherapy such as monoclonal antibody therapy) and synthetic lethality. The choice of therapy depends upon the location and grade of the tumor and the stage of the disease, as well as the general state of the patient (performance status). Cancer genome sequencing helps in determining which cancer the patient exactly has for determining the best therapy for cancer. A number of experimental cancer treatments are also under development. Under current estimates, two in five people will have cancer at some point in their lifetime.

Complete removal of cancer without damage to the rest of the body (that is, achieving cure with near-zero adverse effects) is the ideal goal of treatment and is often the goal in practice. Sometimes this can be accomplished by surgery, but the propensity of cancers to invade adjacent tissue or to spread to distant sites by microscopic metastasis often limits its effectiveness, and chemotherapy and radiotherapy can have a negative effect on normal cells.

Therefore, cure with non-negligible adverse effects may be accepted as a practical goal in some cases; and besides curative intent, practical goals of therapy can also include (1) suppressing cancer to a subclinical state and maintaining that state for years of good quality of life (that is, treating cancer as a chronic disease), and (2) palliative care without curative intent (for advanced-stage metastatic cancers).

Because “cancer” refers to a class of diseases, it is unlikely that there will ever be a single” cure for cancer” any more than there will be a single treatment for all infectious diseases. Angiogenesis inhibitors were once thought to have potential as a “silver bullet” treatment applicable to many types of cancer, but this has not been the case in practice.

Speaking to AljazirahNigeria, Ben Amodu said: “American scientists visited me here about five years ago in my lab, took five samples of my drugs that can treat colon cancer. I never followed them to the U.S, specifically the state of Texas. They started the analysis, first on colon cancer, and then they discovered it can treat colon cancer, and saw that it was doing very well up to 80-89 % in resolving colon cancer.

While they were doing this research, they discovered the drug could resolve lung cancer. They hurriedly set up another experiment on the product and they got 80-89% for both cancers’ I was not there. These things were reported based on scientific procedure, the discovery was presented to a gathering of 18,000 America scientists where the discovery was crowned as a lead discovery and as we speak today we are making use of that product to cure Asthma which has no cure anywhere in the world because of its effect on the lungs. Cancer of the lungs is the highest disease of the lungs, so asthma is child’s play and truly we use it on asthma patients and we’ve cured several.” This was prior to the NCI confirmation.

And for Nigerians and the world at large, the end might just be in sight for a lasting cure to Cancer, one of the leading killer diseases.

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Business

Turning Africa’s Raw Materials Into Wealth: The ARMS 2026 Industrial Agenda

Published

3 days ago

September 29, 2026

The Gleamer

By Joel Ajayi

For decades, Africa’s vast natural resources have powered industries and economies far beyond the continent, while many African countries have remained largely exporters of unprocessed commodities and importers of finished products.

That familiar pattern is now coming under renewed scrutiny as policymakers, researchers, investors and industrialists seek to change the direction of Africa’s resource economy.

At the centre of that conversation is the second edition of the Africa Raw Materials Summit (ARMS 2026), scheduled for October 19 and 20 at the Abuja Continental Hotel, Abuja, under the theme: “From African Feedstock to African Factories.”

Organised by the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), the summit is being positioned as more than another gathering of policymakers and industry stakeholders. It is intended to provide a platform for confronting the structural challenges that have kept African raw materials largely disconnected from local manufacturing.

Africa has for years operated largely within a “pit-to-port” economic model, exporting raw materials while importing expensive finished products.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of the summit on Tuesday in Abuja, the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of RMRDC, Prof. Nnanyelugo Martin Ike-Muonso, said the event would bring together policymakers, investors, researchers, technology providers and industrialists to develop practical strategies for transforming Africa’s abundant natural resources into industrial wealth.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply the abundance of resources, but the continent’s ability to transform those resources into industrial value, employment, technology and wealth within Africa.

Nigeria alone, according to the RMRDC, has more than $582.4 billion in documented non-renewable natural resources, while the wider continent possesses substantial deposits of critical minerals, agricultural raw materials and industrial feedstock.

Yet, the benefits of this resource endowment have often been constrained by inadequate processing capacity, weak infrastructure, limited technology, financing gaps and fragmented regional value chains.

From Dialogue to Industrial Action

ARMS 2026 builds on the maiden edition held in May 2025, which attracted more than 1,000 delegates from across the world.

The inaugural summit also witnessed the unveiling of the Ten-Year Raw Materials Transformation Roadmap (2025–2034) by the Minister of State for Industry, Senator John Owen Enoh.

The roadmap was designed around areas including technological capability, climate-resilient processing and backward integration, establishing a policy framework for greater domestic utilisation of Africa’s raw materials.

The second edition is expected to move the conversation further by bringing policy, capital, technology and industrial stakeholders around practical mechanisms for turning raw materials into locally manufactured products.

One of the major proposals highlighted by the RMRDC is the 30 per cent Mandatory Value Addition Bill, which seeks to establish a statutory minimum level of value addition to Nigerian raw materials before export.

The Council says the proposed framework could support job creation, import substitution, foreign-exchange conservation and increased manufacturing contribution to the economy.

Building the Infrastructure for Value Addition

The industrial transformation envisaged by ARMS 2026 goes beyond legislation.

A major concern is the “missing middle” between where raw materials are produced and where factories are located.

Poor transportation networks, inadequate cold-chain facilities, weak rural roads, limited testing and certification infrastructure and border-related delays can make locally sourced materials more expensive and less competitive.

Consequently, logistics and infrastructure constitute one of the five principal pillars of the summit.

The objective is to develop more reliable corridors connecting farms and mines with processing centres and manufacturing facilities, thereby reducing losses and improving the movement of industrial inputs.

The Digital Dimension

Technology is also becoming an important part of the Council’s strategy.

The RMRDC says it has developed the Nigeria Integrated Information Statistical System for Raw Materials and Products (NISSRAMP), described as a digital repository containing information on feedstock deposits, specifications, production outputs and industrial absorption rates.

The Council has also highlighted its transition towards paperless operations and its certification as a Data Controller/Processor of Major Importance by the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.

Such digital infrastructure could provide investors and manufacturers with better information about the availability and characteristics of raw materials while supporting more informed industrial planning.

Turning Waste Into Industrial Inputs

Another major component of ARMS 2026 is the proposed expansion of the circular economy.

The summit will examine how agricultural by-products, mine tailings, scrap metals and biomass can be recovered and reused as inputs for new production processes rather than being treated simply as waste.

The RMRDC argues that such an approach could lower raw-material costs while supporting more sustainable and climate-resilient manufacturing systems.

For Africa, where industrial expansion must increasingly balance economic development with environmental considerations, waste industrialisation could become an important part of the continent’s manufacturing conversation.

From National Production to African Value Chains

The African Continental Free Trade Area is another important element of the summit’s agenda.

The RMRDC sees AfCFTA as an opportunity to create regional value chains in which raw materials sourced in one African country can be processed and supplied to manufacturers in another.

Under such a model, Africa would move beyond simply exporting commodities to external markets and develop stronger internal networks for supplying chemicals, refined minerals, agricultural inputs and other industrial materials across national borders.

This approach places regional integration at the heart of Africa’s industrialisation strategy.

Bridging Research and Capital

A recurring weakness in many developing economies is the gap between research and commercialisation.

Innovations may emerge from universities, research institutions and laboratories without receiving the financing, equipment or market connections required to become commercially viable.

ARMS 2026 intends to address that gap through technology commercialisation and capital linkages, connecting research outputs with investors, development finance institutions and industrial off-takers.

The RMRDC has also cited partnerships with the Bank of Industry for commercial-scale post-harvest processing and a South-South technology-transfer partnership with the National Innovation Centre par Excellence in Shanghai, China.

A Larger Industrial Conversation

The scale of ARMS 2026 is expected to be significantly larger than the maiden edition.

The organisers project more than 1,800 delegates from all 54 African countries and global industrial partners.

The programme will feature high-level policy dialogues, technical panels, an advanced raw materials and technology exhibition, industrial site visits and the African Raw Materials Industry Awards.

The exhibition, in particular, is expected to showcase locally fabricated processing machinery, advanced domestic materials, green chemicals and engineered commercial inputs.

Beyond the speeches and exhibitions, however, the real significance of ARMS 2026 will ultimately depend on what happens after the summit.

Africa’s challenge has never been a shortage of raw materials. The more difficult question has been how to transform those resources into factories, products, skilled employment, technology and sustainable economic opportunities.

For Nigeria and the rest of the continent, the proposed shift from “pit-to-port” to “feedstock-to-factory” therefore represents a broader debate about the future structure of African economies.

ARMS 2026 seeks to place that debate firmly on the industrial agenda — with value addition, technology, finance, infrastructure, circular production and regional trade at the centre.

If the commitments and partnerships generated by the summit translate into measurable industrial activity, the event could provide another platform for Africa to examine how its enormous resource base can support stronger domestic manufacturing.

The message from the organisers is clear: the continent’s raw materials should not only leave African soil as commodities; they should increasingly become the foundation for African industrial production

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