Senate President Ahmad Lawan on Wednesday said Nigeria must commit human and material resources to produce her own vaccines to achieve herd immunity in the shortest possible time.

He said this at the presentation of a report on a study conducted by an international non-governmental organisation, Westminster Foundation for Democracy at the House of Representatives.

The report, titled ‘Legislative Responses to COVID-19 in Nigeria’, was presented to the “Young Parliamentarians Forum (YPF) of the 9th National Assembly”.

According to him, vaccine production has become a necessity as every country strives for local production to protect its population.

“Otherwise, Nigeria may not achieve the herd immunity in the next four or five years with our over 200 million population. And this is not a fact based on any scientific research. I don’t want to be misquoted.

“With over 200 million, so far, we’ve only vaccinated about four million. I don’t know how we can get 70 percent of our people vaccinated and that will translate into about 150 million or even more, to vaccinate them in the next two or three years,” Daily Trust reports.

The speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, represented by the YPF Chairman of the 9th National Assembly, Kabiru Tukura, said the report would contribute to the efforts of the National Assembly on various legislative responses to deal with health emergencies like COVID 19 and other pandemics that might emerge in the future.