Panelists at the Nigeria Triple Helix roundtable have urged the Federal Government to invest more in education, infrastructure and collaborate with the academia to use innovation to drive economic development in the country.
The panelists made the call on Thursday at a webinar organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) in Lagos, with the theme: “How Innovation Drives Economic Development”.
According to them, Nigeria has not done well in this area due to the inability of government to incentivise and partner with the private sector and Universities.
The President, Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Chief Sam Ohuabunwa, urged government to come up with actions that could result in innovation or integration of research output into production activities of manufacturers.
“For us in the Pharmaceutical area for example, we believe that one thing to do is the identification of raw materials that can be substituted with existing local substitutes.
“There are raw materials that are available, yet they are not being used and it might require a little bit of negotiation, incentives and maybe hand twisting for local industries to use them,” he said.
He urged the Nigeria Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development, NAFDAC under the auspices of the Ministry of Science and Technology etc, to mandate the use of raw materials such as ethanol, which exist in the country but are still imported.
The Managing Director of Siemens Nigeria, Mrs Onyeche Tifase, urged government to leverage on its natural and human resources to be able to drive innovation.
“Why don’t we leverage on our youths and our natural resources to be able to drive innovation?
“By the way, if we don’t do that as other countries have done, then we are still not self sufficient and we are still not addressing this topic,” she said.
The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro , said that President Muhammadu Buhari recently approved additional 7.5 billion naira in addition to the 5 billion naira already approved in 2019 to public universities, polytechnics and some colleges of education as research grants.
“The research grants focus on problems solving, and about two-third of this money will focus on science, technology, engineering and innovation.
“Also focus is on humanities and social sciences and then cross cutting. These are the main themes, but there are also some sub themes,” he said.
Bogoro was represented by Dr Salihu Bakari, Director, Research and Development, TETFUND.
Earlier, the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr Mohammed Abdullahi, said Nigeria had begun to look at homegrown innovations to drive the economy.
“I see that a robust science and Technology innovation ecosystem is the key that will determine our progress and ability to fast track our industrial growth and development.
“At the moment, we are trying to redirect our energies from the normal research Institute to a research institute that is geared towards achieving results for the benefit of the country, so that we can drive commercialisation, competitiveness which in turn will result in industrial growth that will create jobs, wealth and alleviate poverty in the country.
“Part of our initiative in this regard is to look at the science and technology park which we developed in liaison with UNESCO, among others,” he said.
