A leading Foods & Infrastructure conglomerates with its headquarters in Lagos, BUA Group has reportedly financed one million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines for Nigeria.
Naija News understands that the company paid for the dreaded disease remedy through the AFREXIM Vaccine programme in partnership with CACOVID.
The firm in a statement made available to newsmen on Monday, February 8 revealed that the vaccines will be delivered next week. According to BUA, the vaccines will be distributed at no cost to Nigerian citizens.
“These doses of the vaccine which should be delivered by next week will be the first delivery of Vaccines to Nigeria since the COVID-19 vaccines became available,” the statement noted.
The statement quoted Founder of BUA, Abdul Samad Rabiu, as thanking the President of the Afrexim Bank, Dr Benedict Oramah, for making the purchase possible and the Nigerian Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, for coordinating the process through the CACOVID Private Sector partnership.
The statement reads further: “BUA decided to secure these 1million vaccines by paying the full amount for the vaccines today because these vaccines became available only last week through AFREXIM.
“We expect the vaccines to be delivered within the next 14 days and hope priority will be given to our frontline workers who have committed their lives to managing the pandemic.”
“In addition to this, BUA is committing to purchase 5 million doses for Nigeria as soon as they become available through this same arrangement,” Rabiu added.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, on Monday, said 13 cases of the United Kingdom strain of the virus known as B117 have been discovered in Nigeria.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation stated this at the weekly press briefing of the PTF, Naija News reports.