As Nigerians anxiously await the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines, health experts and critical stakeholders in the health sector have expressed divergent views on whether to import the vaccines or produce them locally in the country.
This is coming just as the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday marked the first anniversary of its declaration of COVID-19 as a "public health emergency of international concern" by urging the global community to take action to bring the pandemic under control.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a year ago there were fewer than 100 cases of the disease and no deaths outside China, but the world passed 100million reported cases and is approaching 2.2 million deaths last week.


Tedros said vaccines had given the world another window of opportunity to bring the pandemic under control, and it must not be squandered by not sharing the vaccines equitably among rich and poor nations.
"The pandemic has exposed and exploited the inequalities of our world. There is now the real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic - vaccines - may exacerbate those same inequalities," the WHO chief added.
Tedros challenged the world's governments and industry leaders to work together to ensure that in the first 100 days of 2021, the vaccination of health workers and older people is underway in all countries.
He also called on those governments to share their excess doses with the WHO-organized COVAX vaccine cooperative, which distributes vaccines to poor nations.
Meanwhile, some of the health experts in Nigeria said if the country had started working on its own vaccine since 2020, it would have been expecting the result by now instead of relying on those from other countries.
They blamed Nigeria's continuous reliance on foreign products, including drugs and vaccines, on lack of political will and poor funding of research institutes.
But others argue that Nigeria has the capacity but lacks the facilities to produce vaccines and even carry out clinical trials on imported vaccines.
This is just as a report by the BBC hinted that Nigeria and other African countries may have to wait for a long time before getting the vaccines as wealthy countries have almost secured the whole vaccines.
The federal government had earlier announced that the country was expecting the first phase of the vaccines this month but later added that the vaccines were now expected to arrive in February.