By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
In a bid to protect local inventions and less dependence on foreign made goods, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Olorunimbe Mamora, has recommended the banning of all foreign goods that Nigeria has the capacity to produce locally.
Addressing State House Correspondents on Tuesday at the Ministerial Media Briefing organized by the Presidential Communications at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Mamora regretted that most of the inventions by agencies under the ministry are gathering dust on shelves because of a lack of investors.
According to him, while the ministry would continue to engage the relevant stakeholders, it is also thinking of legislation to compel the protection of the inventions before pushing them to the market.
Asked what was being done with all the several inventions by the ministry, Mamora said: “What do we do with all these inventions? It’s a question that we have also been pondering about. It will interest you that virtually all our agencies have come up with one invention or the other.
“But the challenge had always been taking these research outputs to the market. Because until and unless we are able to take them to the market, we would not be seen to have been able to do something.”
While noting that the ministry’s gradual steps may be slow, he pointed out that: “We need to do more in terms of having that handshake between the research institutions and the market through investors and those who are interested, people that move around with their capital and would want to invest.
“So it’s a challenge that we know we are still facing which we need to do more about it. There are so many outputs that are still gathering dust on the shelves of various agencies.
“So what we are doing is to continue to engage to continue to have fora for this engagement where we can bring all stakeholders together.
“We are fond of talking about this triple helix, since the agencies, the academia, industries, and others so that we can have this interaction and people can know that look, we need this let’s take this to market.”
The Minister also stressed the need for people to be aware of the inventions and desire them, saying, “Then we are also looking at how we can compel as it were may be through legislation that once these things are available, particularly if they are patents because we also need to protect the intellectual property of the inventors.
“Then we can just push them to the market. So the challenge is about getting investors that will take these things out there and these things can then be useful to our people. Again, we also have a duty in terms of our own nationalism.
“One of the challenges again is we have developed a taste that is not local, but rather an alien taste. We have this tendency to want to get something from abroad”.
Meanwhile, Mamora has emphasised that technology needs assessment to be able to know what the people want, insisting that the country is so blessed but is yet to harness what is available to her.
Said he: “Technology needs assessment to be able to know what we want. We are so blessed but we are yet to harness what is available to us”.
Speaking on the Mission of the ministry, he said it was to be the foremost National Science, Technology and Innovation Establishment in Africa comparable with the best in the world.
Besides, he said the Mission Statement was to deploy Science, Technology and Innovation in achieving a sustainable knowledge-based economy for the nation.
On the contribution of the ministry to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, GPD, Senator Mamora said: “From 2015 to 2022, Nominal GDP grew from ₦94.4 Trillion to ₦199.34 Trillion by 2022, and the STI sector improved from ₦3.93 Trillion in 2015 to ₦5.35 Trillion by 2022.
