Buhari Shuns Another Opportunity To Address Nigeria On Lekki Massacre At Weekly FEC Meeting

President Muhammadu Buhari has refused to comment on the Lekki Massacre of peaceful #ENDSARS protesters as he presides over the Federal Executive Council Meeting on Wednesday.

Buhari who has been advised by notable Nigerians to address the country on the Tuesday massacre at Lekki that saw men of the Nigerian army opening fire on Peaceful protesters failed to heed to the advice as he kept mum at another opportunity he had to address the country.

READ ALSO: Lekki Massacre: Adeboye Condemns Attack, Begs Youths To Avoid Confrontation With Military

Speaking to newsmen after the end of the FEC meeting, the minister of health, Osagie Ehanire revealed that a bill to establish a council for a traditional, alternative, and complementary medicine practice in Nigeria had been approved.

According to Ehanire, the establishment became necessary to provide an avenue for developing traditional medicine alternatives.

“The outbreak of COVID-19 has renewed the call for home-grown solutions to all these public health diseases and to find the value in our traditional medicines, and this is an opportunity with which traditional medicine’s practice can, not only be upscaled, but also regulated because there are also areas of malpractice that should be checked,” Ehanire said.

“It will also provide for the possibility of trainings, setting up institutions and also being able to research further, working with the institute of pharmaceutical research of Nigeria to actually dig out the values that are in our traditional medicines, where they can be used and be used for research.

“There’s also conversation about protecting the intellectual property rights of who knows these medicines. My attention was drawn to the fact that property rights are not so easily protected the way we define them; they are defined differently.

“The protection of traditional knowledge is something that can also be established, on which we are going to be discussing with the ministry of industry, trade and investment, to protect the knowledge that has been accumulated over several generations, which is in the custody of traditional practitioners.

“By and large, this is a memo that meets a lot of demands and serves a lot of purposes.”

Also addressing newsmen after the FEC meeting was the minister of environment Muhammad Mahmood who disclosed that the council approved a national policy on plastic waste management in Nigeria.

“The federal ministry of environment today presented a memo on the national policy on plastic waste management in Nigeria.

“Recall that about three months ago, we presented a memo on solid waste management, and plastic, being one of the compositions of total waste, has a significant place in the total waste regime because of its non-biodegradable nature and we have plastics littered all over the place, which is an environmental hazard to both humans and animals.

“What this policy seeks to do is to seize the opportunity of our paradigm shift from linear to circular economy. The standard procedure in the past was, you produce, you use and dispose and we just realised that we cannot continue to do that and plastic has lent itself to recycling or reuse.

“Therefore, what this policy intends to achieve is to capitalise on that property of it being reused.”