I am glad to welcome you on behalf of the Committee to the website of the Animal Care and Use Research Ethics Committee (ACUREC).  The ACUREC is one of the five ethics committees at the University of Ibadan.  Also, ACUREC came into being as a result of the Federal and State agencies that mandate regulation of animal research through the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC).  The ACUREC is therefore empowered by policy and law to ensure all research activities involving animals satisfy federal, state and local regulations and policies governing the use of animals in research. The University of Ibadan, ACUREC is currently duly registered with the National Code for Health Research Ethics, Nigeria (NHREC/UIACUREC/05/12/2022A).

It is therefore compulsory for any researcher in the University thinking of using animal in research to apply for (by submitting research protocol and other required documents to ACUREC) and obtain ethical approval before embarking on such research activity.  This is important because increasingly, human continue to transgress their ecological responsibilities; act in self-interest and at the expense of a relationship within nature that is caring and responsible; and for the fact that millions of animals are used every year in many extremely painful, distressing and outrageous scientific procedures.

ACUREC operates to promote and sub-serve the University’s research mission.  Its stated vision is to engender and promote an enabling environment for conducting experimental researches involving laboratory animals with globally acceptable standards, directed towards the wholesome benefit of the research community and the society at large while its mission is to provide a platform geared towards educating the scientific world on global best practices as it concerns humane handling and use of laboratory animals for research purposes.  Being guided by the vision and mission, the committee exerts considerable efforts to put in place a robust research ethics review system in order to ensure a safe research environment, effective research practices, as well as quality, credible, reliable and marketable research outputs.

ACUREC takes the issue of research ethics compliance serious, but in the spirit of working together with researchers in order to achieve the institution’s research goal.  Therefore, it is the view of the committee that culture of compliance is best cultivated in researchers through education.  In this light providing relevant and regular ethics education is a major activity of the committee.  This is usually done through university-wide training workshops.  It is important to say that the ACUREC website will help fine tune and ease the animal research proposal review process and also provides a platform for research ethics education/ethical guidelines especially in animal research ethics.

ACUREC office is being managed by an internationally trained Research Administrator and a staff of the Research Management Office, University of Ibadan, therefore adequate support service is available to researchers in term of necessary guidance and required information.

Professor Daniel Oladimeji OLUWAYELU  

Chairman