By Chioma Obinna The Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency, NNMDA, on Monday called for sustained research, regulation and documentation of traditional medicine practices to enable Nigeria harness the sector’s potential in achieving universal health coverage.
The Director-General of NNMDA, Prof Martins Emeje, made the call at the 2026 African Traditional Medicine Day health walk and conference, with the theme: “Reflection on Research and Development Efforts of Traditional Medicine Towards Achieving Universal Health Coverage in the African Region.” Emeje said Nigeria could not achieve medicine security or universal health coverage by neglecting its rich traditional medicine resources, stressing that research and development remained critical to transforming indigenous knowledge into safe and effective healthcare solutions.
He said: “Any country that underrates or does not prioritise research and development of its own natural resources towards getting local medicines will suffer from medicine insecurity. “The beauty of natural medicine is that our food is the raw materials, the building blocks to making our medicines. Development of natural medicine means we are ensuring good food and medicine security.
And you can only do this through research and development.” The NNMDA boss said research into traditional medicine should not be confined to laboratories, noting that valuable knowledge could also be obtained by systematically documenting the experiences of practitioners who had spent decades serving their communities.
“There are lots of research that we can do by just going to these people who have spent 30, 40 years practising traditional medicine, asking them questions, getting information, documenting it, curating it and screening it,” he said.He disclosed that the agency had commenced digital documentation of traditional medicine practitioners, stressing that effective regulation could not be achieved without first knowing who the practitioners were, where they operated and what they practised.“You cannot regulate properly those you don’t know.
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