Kate Isa is the CEO of Katchey Laboratories which has been significant in the health sector for over three decades. Her career started at Data Sciences where she perceived gaps and began to find ways to fill them. In this interview with Yetunde Oladeinde she takes you into her world, the turning point when she came in contact with the former NAFDAC DG, Prof Dora Akunyili.
This is the political dispensation; we are getting ready for another election, what advise do you have for Nigerian women?
Women need to step up. Don’t wait for anyone to call you to get interested.
Are you interested in politics?
Why don’t I stay here? My husband and I ran for governorship of Kogi State two times, 2010 and 2012. I went around mobilising women and youths. So, I have been in that terrain. Right now, what we want to do is to empower people, identify the material and we would never disengage. But let me tell you the most effective solution to political nonsense, shenanigans. It is the relegation of poverty, as we create enabling environment, which we do at Katchey, we empower people. At Katchey, we don’t give fish, we teach to fish in different places.
We call ourselves Ministry and we seed into widows, orphans and others. We don’t give money, we empower. There was one woman that we enabled to buy grinding machine in southern Kaduna. She was telling the head of the Ministry there, that she earns 50,000 naira every month from grinding from that machine in the village in southern Kaduna. That might as well be 50 million naira in Lagos. So, empowering people like that is important for us. We are mobilising for positive change. A lot of the people here are family and friends, they are not science community. I was activating them, to bring the money they have stashed away and come and invest in Nigeria and develop this country for posterity. We invited the science community and we intentionally pulled them in. Some of the people talk about plan B but I keep telling them that Nigeria is my plan A, B and C to Z. This is because I had the opportunity to live abroad but I have chosen to invest everything here. There are opportunities here and as the economy begins to grow and people get empowered, embolden, enabled, they can create work for themselves, we would find a lot of the bad things go away. We owe it to ourselves and prosperity, it existential.
There is a lot of support for STEM education; do you have girls that you are mentoring in that area?
I have girls but what do you call STEM Education? You mean those Robotics that they play with. Those things are toys that are not STEM. STEM is learning science with digital lab equipment, foundational things, not Robotics. Robotics is extra curricula. I don’t discriminate between boys and girls, STEM is for everybody in every school and I was so delighted to hear today that Lagos State has decided to embrace STEM. We are expecting Ogun state to do same, because the first STEM we did was a school built in Ogun State and sponsored by an oil company. We also go to oil companies and encourage them to sponsor science building equipment for the good of the schools. I have met with every Minister since year 2000 apart from Mrs. Oby Ekwesilisi and the current one. I wasn’t able to see the Minister of State pushing for Digital science. Then there wasn’t even STEM. We are in the digital world, 21st century. But we are teaching our children with analogue equipments, it doesn’t make sense. Digital equipment is 10 per cent of the cost of analogue. It’s cheaper, it’s just for us to revamp the curriculum, embrace it and move forward, and it would enable and skill our children. They gave me contract to supply equipment to Federal Government colleges, I saw in that list things I used so many years ago. I went to them, cried and they promised to do something. He waspassionate but you see this structure of our Federation is a problem. So, we sponsor research to identify gaps and they use our reports to give out contracts. We sponsored the inspection team and we went to a number of schools around the country and we did that report, designed a catalogue that satisfied NECO and others. If our children learn good science and are successful, Nigeria would move forward. For me, it is about Nigeria.
What does Katchey mean to you?
Katchey represents an opportunity to bring us up to competitiveness and we put Nigeria on the map. Also katchey represents the opportunity to begin to manufacture identified laboratory products. We can’t manufacture everything because our environment is not enabling. You can’t generate your own power, produce your own water, without getting government support by way of zero interest, while they use Robotics to work 24/7, without human limitations and expect to compete against them. So, we identify strategic products to produce here, there are some other lab equipments that countries are actually hoarding for themselves and you have to go through serious process to get export permits to ship them like Class 2 safety cabinets from China. We placed orders for 8 units; they required that we bring original NTDC Documents. We got the DG to write, they went to the website and there were all manner of things that we had to do. We had paid to freight them by air because they were needed and the cost was more than the equipment. We still have that money stuck in China and had to buy it elsewhere. We lost money to shipping because of the time for processing export to ship them. No country would allow you to export class 3 safety cabinets. They are very important to research into diseases and important genetic materials. So, we are looking to beginning to manufacture this here, get all the International Permits and make them here. Nobody can then talk about restrictions; we are identifying gaps and bringing solutions.
How soon are you expecting the complex to be ready?
We are looking at 18 months to two years, God helping us. But HE always helps us. Thatlab, we were paying rent for space for 6 years not having the money. At my father’s time, HE gave us resources to equip that lab, fully paid for, no debt. So, that is how my father works, I talked about the audacity of faith.
Tell us how you got into the sector?
I was the forewoman, supervising our first building in Lagos, which incidentally now houses the Katchey Laboratories. I couldn’t just stay idle. I did other things; including trying to bring Kimberly Clark to Nigeria to manufacture Huggies, but that didn’t work. One day, while struggling to sell off the 4-40 ft containers of Huggies we imported to sensitize the market; my husband came home with a list and gave it to me. It contained strange sounding products, like Ammonium Chloride Analar, HCL, GPR, Fuming Sulphuric acid Analar etc. The then DG NAFDAC, Prof Osuide, who was and still is his friend , had given him the list to help to source the chemicals because they were having problems of substandard quality of inputs for analysis in their laboratories. So, the journey into Science Laboratory Solutions began.
So, it was that when Prof. Dora Akunyili became the NAFDAC Dg and was determined to fight fake drugs which were prevalent at the time, she knew that her lab network was critical to ensure that no result from any NAFDAC lab could be successfully contested. Her search for a Crown Agent in Nigeria led her to Katchey, and with an exclusive supply agreement that was approved by the then President Obasanjo, Katchey proceeded to reequip and modernize NAFDAC’s laboratory network across the country. Prof Akunyili would go on to say that the partnership with Katchey was a critical factor in her ability to successfully wage her valiant war against fake drugs in Nigeria. So, Katchey evolved from being just a supplier of laboratory chemicals and reagents, to providing total solutions to different kinds of laboratories, from design, to build, to equip, to maintain and to operate.
Where do you see the organisation in the next few years?
We are catching all things. This is one hectare; we have also purchased another hectare beyond the fence. We are looking to locate in some other areas like Ibeju Lekki, where they have those industrial Estates. Katchey has also set up a Medical Diagnostic lab that we manage. We have one that we commissioned in Warri two months ago we equip, staff and manage. We also have one in Yola that we are setting up and another at Adeniyi Jones, Ikeja. So, we are expanding, backward integrating, forward integrating and sideways expanding. Just catching all things possible. There are opportunities in this country, it’s huge. Some people just want to go and vegetate in oyinboland, where you would be the driver, the maid, cook, dishwasher, cleaner, nanny and business executive. That’s what I do when I go there; I have a home in LA. I can live there but I would vegetate, my brain would rot and when I go home, my father is going to ask me, all the talent I invested in you, what did you do with it. Somebody has to build this Nation. If Nigeria fails, the whole of Africa fails because there are too many Nigerians and they would overrun Africa. We cannot afford to let Nigeria fail, you look at things and they look hopeless but if you light your candle and I light my candle , she light hers and you refuse to compromise , you do the right thing. Before you know it, the whole country is aglow with light. We need to love this nation, refuse to allow it to die, take ownership and begin to hype it. I believe in Nigeria.