BioresourcesDevt Centre Enjoys Facelift, as New Director Seeks Collaborative Partners

Olusegun Samuel in Yenagoa

Established in 2003, the Bioresources Development Center, Odi, Bayelsa State, was to cater for biodiversity services in Agriculture, Nutrition, Health and Industry in the Niger Delta region, but the center after billions of naira were used to procure state-of-the-art equipment has been lying desolate and unused.

The once globally recognized bioresource facility and grassroot empowerment centre with notable achievement in patents, research driven innovations and high impact scientific publication has been comatose since 2015, with some of the equipment now becoming obsolete and rotting away.

A visit to the facility by our correspondent shows recent attempts to bring the place back to its old glory under a new coordinator/Director, Dr. Wood Timipanipiri, the first Niger Deltan to head the center since creation.

Dr. Timipanipiri, who took our correspondent round the facilities, promised to champion the rescue of the center, adding that the decay of the facilities was as a result of the Covid 19 epidemic, the floods and one year strike action embarked by Academy Staff Union of Nigeria University (ASUU) and Academy Staff Union of Research Institute (ASURI), which the workers belong to.

However, he said plans are in motion to sustainable regig the centre as he has begun a facelift of the centre while calling on other agencies like the Niger Delta Department Commission (NDDC), the Nigeria Content and Development Board (NCDMB) and other agencies including oil companies, state and federal government to join hand in meeting the noble goals of the center.

He said: ‘For the past 20 years or more, we have been training people in all these bio-enterprises. People have come to this centre and after the training, they have established their own facility and they are doing very well.

“We have worked with the Bayelsa State Government in training Bayelsa youths in various agro-enterprises, we have worked with Shell, we have worked with PAP, we have worked with NDDC and we even have MOUs with close to six to seven universities within the Niger Delta axis.

“So, our focus is to be able to bring wealth creation to the people, job creation to the people, affordable health care, using this local bioresources.

We actually have, five major bio-enterprises in this centre. One is the mushroom production technology, we have the grass cutter production technology, we have the aquaculture unit, we also have the snailries, and then we have the poultry. So, these are some of the bio-enterprises we have right now.”

On his plans to make the place a beehive of activities like before, Dr. Timipanipiri said in order to overhaul the center, there is the need to strengthen collaboration with all the stakeholders that used to partner with them.

He said: “So what I want to do immediately, I have a short-term goal and a long-term goal. For the short-term I’m going to embark on what I call ‘restoration facility drive’ to make sure that all the bio enterprises are working optimally and operationally.

“We have a problem with power supply here; we have a big generator – outputting a 250 kVA we have another three other generators well we don’t have the resources to sustainably run them and I did not mention that we have advanced bioresources laboratory of which all lab is used to be one of the best laboratories in Nigeria, if not Africa.

“Yes, it was fully equipped with modern cutting-edge equipment. But again, because of this power problem we’ve not been able to sustainably use this laboratory so this are the things that I intend to do immediately.

“I will also embark on retraining of staff again because this is a technical facility, so it’s until they’re properly trained that they can train others. We are embarking on a general overhauling of the whole architecture but with a focus to train our people again on bio enterprises and lab activities.

“We are committed to strengthening our relationship again with the state government and other organizations to achieve a partnership that will birth sustainable electricity in the centre, as power is critical for our equipment.”