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Feature: Nigerian Gets CRI Recognition For Cancer Cure

Published

6 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

Tax Reform Bills: The Verdict of Nigerians

Published

2 weeks ago

March 6, 2025

The Gleamer

Ismaila Ahmad Abdullahi Ph.D

The public hearings conducted recently by the two Chambers of the National Assembly have elicited positive responses from a broad spectrum of Nigerians, cutting across regional interest groups, government agencies, civil society groups, concerned individuals, the academia, and Labour Unions, among diverse others. Contrary to a few dissensions hitherto expressed in the media, almost all the stakeholders who spoke during the week-long sessions were unanimous in their declaration that the hallowed Chambers should pass the tax reform bills after a clean-up of the grey areas.

The public hearings were auspicious for all Nigerians desirous of economic growth and fiscal responsibility. They were also a watershed moment for the Federal Inland Revenue Service, which had been upbeat about the tax reforms. Indeed, the public hearings had rekindled hope in the tenets of democracy that guarantee freedom of expression and equitable space for cross-fertilisation of ideas. Without gainsaying the fact, the tax reform bills have been unarguably about the most thought-provoking issues in Nigeria today, drawing variegated perspectives and commentaries from even unlikely quarters such as the faith-based leaders, student bodies, and trade unions, which speaks much about the importance of the bills.

In the build-up to the public hearings, not many people believed that the bills would make it to the second reading, much less the public hearings. Even the Northern stakeholders who seemed unlikely to support the passage of the bills have softened their stance and have given valuable suggestions that would enrich the substance of the bills. The Arewa Consultative Forum came to the public hearings well-prepared with a printed booklet that addressed their concerns. It concluded with an advisory that the bills should be “Well planned, properly communicated, strategically implemented and ample dialogue and political consensus allowed for the reforms to be accepted.”

The concerns of ACF ranged from the composition of the proposed Nigeria Revenue Service Board as contained in Part 111, Section 7 of the bill, the unlimited Presidential power to exempt/wave tax payment as proposed in Section 75(1) of the bill, the family income or inheritance tax as contained in Part 1, Section 4(3) of the bill, to the issues around development levy and VAT. On the development levy, the ACF stated that unless the Federal Government is considering budgetary funding for TETFUND, NASENI and NITDA, it does not see the “wisdom behind the plan to replace (them) with NELFUND”.

The position of the North was equally reinforced by the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, Northern Elders Forum, Kano State Government, Professor Auwalu Yadudu, and the FCT Imams. Like the ACF, these stakeholders lent their respective voices to the Section on the Inheritance Tax in Part 1 of the bill and the use of the term ‘ecclesiastical’, which, in their views, undermines certain religious rights and beliefs. The Kano State Government, represented by Mahmud Sagagi, affirmed that “we support tax modernisation” but cautioned that “we must ensure that this process does not come at the expense of states’ constitutional rights and economic stability”. Professor Auwalu Yadudu, a constitutional law professor, drew attention to the use of the ‘supremacy clause’ and cautioned that the repeated use of “notwithstanding” in the bills would undermine the supremacy of the Nigerian constitution if passed as such.

Other stakeholders that made contributions at the sessions included the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, Nigeria Customs Service, and a host of others. While most of their concerns bordered on technical issues requiring fine-tuning, they were unanimous in their support for the bills. They aligned with the position of the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Zacch Adedeji, Ph.D. and the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, which is that the extant tax laws and fiscal regulations are obsolete necessitating reforms aimed at creating a fair and equitable tax and fiscal space to grow Nigeria’s economy.

In one of the sessions, Dr Zaach Adedeji expounded on the criss-cross of trade activities in the Free Trade Zone whereby companies misuse tax waivers as exporters to sell their goods or services in the Customs Area at an amount usually less than the price the operators in the Customs Area who pay VAT and other taxes sell theirs thereby disrupting business transactions. This way, the operators in the Free Trade Zone shortchange the government in paying their due taxes by circumventing extant regulations, which are inimical to the economy’s growth.

Overall, the presentations were forthright, foresighted, and helpful in elucidating the issues contained in the bills. According to the statistics read out at the end of the hearings at the Senate, 75 stakeholders were invited, 65 made submissions, and 61 made presentations. At the House of Representatives 53 stakeholders made presentations. By all means, this is a fair representation. Given the presentations, it is evident that the National Assembly has gathered enough materials to guide its deliberations on the bills. As we look forward to the passage of the bills, we commend the leadership of the National Assembly for their unwavering commitment to making the bills see the light of the day.

Abdullahi is the Director of the Communications and Liaison Department, FIRS.

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