THE President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on Wednesday presided over the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council from the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Despite that the meeting held a few hours after soldiers opened fire on protesting youths in Lekki, Lagos State, and at a time there were reports of continued killing in some parts of the state, the council kept mum on the issue.

None of the ministers who briefed State House correspondents on the outcome of the meeting mentioned anything relating to the incident that had turned international attention on the country.

Those who spoke to journalists after the meeting are the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed; Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire; Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Niyi Adebayo; and the Minister of Environment, Mohammed Mahmood.

Ehanire said his ministry presented a memorandum to the council on a bill to establish a Council for Traditional, Alternative and Complementary Medicine Practice in Nigeria.

He said the memorandum sought to take traditional and complementary medicine out of obscurity and institutionalise it as has been done in other countries, particularly China and India.

Ehanire said, “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 medicine.

“This is an opportunity with which traditional medicine practice can not only be upscaled but also be regulated because there are also areas of malpractice that should be checked.

“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 dig out the values that are in our traditional medicines, where they can be used and be used for research.

 Adebayo, on his part, said the council ratified Nigeria’s membership of the International Coffee Organisation.

He said the country had been having an observer status in the organisation since 2008 when it signed the agreement and had been missing out on benefits accrued to members.

This, he said, was because the agreement had not been ratified.