The 28th Annual National Conference of the Association of Industrial Pharmacists of Nigeria (NAIP) will hold from 23 to 27 June , 2025, at the Citadel, Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun Ikeja, Lagos State.
The association is gearing up for the conference to sensitise players in the pharma industry on how to scale up, innovate and transform their operations/businesses for the overall development of the nation’s pharmaceutical industry.
Briefing journalists on the event at NAIP House in Lagos, (NAIP secretariat) on Wednesday, the National Chairman of the association, Pharm. Ken Onuegbu said the event will kick off on Monday with welcome cocktail at country club by 6pm.
On Tuesday, according to the chairman, there will be medical outreach in Ejigbo area of the state, where the vulnerable will be given medical attention as well as receiving medicines. Pharm. Onuegbu added that there will be an industrial visit also on Tuesday.
The opening ceremony of the conference proper will hold on Wednesday 25 June at the Citadel, and it will be chaired by the Managing Director/CEO of Juhel Nigeria Ltd., Dr Ifeanyi Okoye, while Dr Margaret Ilomuanya, of the Department of Pharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lagos will deliver the keynote address on the theme of the conference “Scale, Innovation and Transformation of Nigerian Pharmaceutical Industry (SIT 2025)”.
The President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), Pharm. Tanko Ayuba will be the chief host of the conference.
There will also be plenary sessions and one of the topics for the plenary session is “Nigerian pharma industry without borders, driving global competitiveness”.
Pharm. Onuegbu disclosed that the association will hold its Annual General Meeting on Thursday 26 June, where a new chairman and other exco members that will pilot the affairs of the association will be elected, adding that this year’s conference will be concluded with a closing dinner/award night, where many personalities will receive awards from the association.
Unlike the previous editions of the conference, the Chairman, Conference Planning Committee, Pharm. Jude Abonu explained that this year’s conference will also have a pharmaceutical expo, where pharmaceutical manufacturers will showcase their products.
Pharm Abonu said ” We expect as many of them as possible. And we’re also expecting exhibitions from even the players in the non-pharmaceutical industry. Also, the service industries to the pharmaceutical industry are also going to display. The conference is going to offer an opportunity for consumers, other pharmaceutical players in the community as well, who may wish to procure products from these companies they dream of at a better price at the conference arena”.
Corroborating Pharm. Abonu, the Director of Operations, NAIP, Pharm. Emeka Ndinechi said the pharma expo is one of the side attractions for the association’s 2025 annual conference, adding that the 2025 conference promises to be memorable.
Justifying the selection of the theme for the conference, the conference organising committee chairman said the association wants industrial pharmacists to up their game on whatever they are producing so as to meet the pharmaceutical needs of the country, thereby becoming self-sufficient in medicine.
He said “if today, for instance, countries like India and China decide they’re not going to allow us to import their drugs into our country, can we produce enough pharmaceuticals for Nigerians? The answer currently is no. So we’re asking ourselves, how can we scale up whatever we’re producing to meet our needs? That’s where the scale comes in, but scale cannot come without innovation”.
“Innovation on the other hand is the new way of doing all things. So we must come up with new technologies, new ways, new machines, new equipment, new knowledge, and new talents and new ways of doing things so that we can come up with greater, better products”.
On transformation, he said “there is a need for transformation. We can’t keep doing the same thing, the same old thing, and expect a new result. We must transform our industry from the mundane to what it should be. So we believe that with those three words, as simple as they are, if we are able to implement some of the things that we are going to say during the conference, we can take our game to the next level as an industry”.
Corroborating Pharm. Abonu’s explanation, Onuegbu added that scale up also affects individual pharmacists’ knowledge base. “We need to scale up our knowledge base. From the era of COVID, things have drastically changed. Today, there is artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, Internet of Things, among others. The question is how many pharmacists can honestly raise their heads that they can compete with any pharmacists from any other part of the world? So we need to challenge ourselves to be in tandem with the moving technology. We need to scale up our knowledge base, especially in digital transformation”, the NAIP chairman said.
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