Cyprian Orakpo – Nigeria’s Top 10 Covid-19 Innovators

Managing Director, Transgreen Nigeria Limited

Pastor Cyprian Orakpo, managing director, Transgreen Nigeria Limited, heads a company that has fast-tracked its contribution to the fight against Covid-19 in Nigeria with the speed of an emergency response. A serving pastor at Redeemed Christian Church of God and Chairman/CEO of his organisation, he has positioned the business to rise to the challenge of building local capacity for the production of personal protective equipment within a space of three months to July 2020.  

Transgreen Nigeria has built a facemask producing factory in Lagos with a daily output of 240,000 WHO-standard medical facemasks. With that, the company has set a record of being the first indigenous company in Nigeria to produce medical facemask.

This has been marked as a strategic production line in health facilities for Nigeria. Dr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, governor of Lagos State said it has attested to the ‘can-do’ spirit of Nigerians. Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s Vice President acknowledged it as a feat achieved in record time.

Orakpo considers his endeavour as a response to a need for national security products since the world is yet to find a preventative vaccine or curative drugs to the COVID-19 pandemic. Domesticating the preventive measures against coronavirus has become a global trend of which Transgreen Nigeria has taken a bold step to make it happen in Nigeria.

Shortage of personal protective equipment trailed the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic – creating a life threatening challenge in Nigeria and the rest of the world. Hitherto exporting nations of the products focused on meeting internal demands to the detriment of exports. This resulted in acute scarcity in many countries, which jerked up prices of the critically needed products.

For Nigeria, the culture of external dependence failed in the midst of a global emergency. It is either to innovate or lose the battle against the pandemic. Transgreen Nigeria is one of the innovators that took up the challenge to empower the nation in handling the health crisis.

This time around, Transgreen Nigeria Limited, maker of O-Care Face Mask, has risen up to the occasion to fill this void and contribute her quota as the first indigenous company to produce local medical facemask. This factory is primed to produce up to 240,000 medical face masks daily,” Orakpo said.

According to him, the medical facemask offers protection against dust, pollen, bacteria and all known viruses with breathable comfort and low respiratory resistance. He assures of its durability and full compliance to WHO specified standard.

It has an outermost non-woven layer that protects the wearer from droplets and splashes. The middle layer is a filter against bacteria and viruses while the innermost or skin layer is a soft fabric/tissue that is comfortable to the skin.

Prior to COVID-19 pandemic, there was no local medical facemask manufacturing facility in Nigeria. Transgreen Nigeria Limited assembled one in three months between May and July to promote health security in the country.

Orakpo, a businessman of international repute with over 20 years of experience, has a clear purpose of what he set out to do: to mass produce affordable medical facemask and make it available and accessible to all Nigerians. By so doing, he would help Nigerians to live and work freely, learn and play and sustain the normal activities that would keep the nation moving forward in the face of an unusual crisis.

Respiratory hygiene has taken a centre stage in curbing the spread of the disease. Wearing a facemask is a practical step in that direction. Making a standard facemask available in Nigeria is the great contribution that Transgreen Nigeria is making to fill the void between demand and supply.

The company’s medical facemask factory is acclaimed to be the first certified and registered medical facemask manufacturer in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa. The company also produces other medical personal protective equipment.

Transgreen Nigeria is a member of Transerve Disc Technologies Limited group of companies, a company that Orakpo founded in 1993. Transgreen Nigeria is on a mission to adapt technology to the needs of the marketplace. Innovation is therefore at the centre of its activities geared towards implementing new ideas and creating dynamic products.

Orakpo is a graduate of economics and statistics from the University of Benin and is also a product of Lagos Business School. His working experience started with Orasonic Nigeria Limited where he was in charge as operations manager and rose to become general manager in 1992. In his quest for self-actualization, he resigned from the company in 1993 to establish his own business that has presently come to international recognition. 

He started a trading company in 1994, – Transerve Nigeria which engaged in importation and distribution of blank media products (audio and videotapes). By the year 2000, the company held over 30 percent of Nigeria’s tape market.

It consolidated its name in the audio/video/CD market with the introduction of two novel products – the audio tape in unbreakable poly boxes and audio video CD duplicating machines. Its VHS duplicating studio complemented its market dominance with industrial machines having capacity of over 12,000 copies of E-90 per day.

The company progressed to films duplication for producers and marketers and later diversified into the importation and sales of library and jewel boxes and kingdom word audiotapes. The growing basket of the company’s products soon made it a “one stop shop” for audio, video and CD products.

In line with his vision of adapting technology to customers’ needs, Orakpo incorporated Transerve Disc Technologies Limited in 2003 to lead the market from analogue to digital media. The company veered into CD, VCD and DVD replication with full color screen printing.

The company stands out today as the first and only major indigenous CD/VCD/DVD manufacturing plant in Nigeria with branches in major cities of the country. Orakpo takes the credit for having been a major player in changing the face of the audiovisual industry in Nigeria by improving quality through competitiveness, setting the pace and benchmarks with his company’s technology edge in the business.