Olorunnimbe Mamara, the minister of science, technology, and innovation, has advocated for a complete ban on all imports.
He claimed that Nigeria has the ability to produce locally in order to safeguard national inventions.
During the weekly ministerial briefing organized by the presidential communications staff, Mamora revealed this to State House reporters.
He claimed that the majority of the inventions made by the agencies are unused on shelves because of a lack of investors and a weak market.
He stated that while the ministry will continue to work with the appropriate parties, it has also considered passing laws to require inventions to be protected before being released onto the market.
He claims that the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation is having trouble getting the results of research to market, and that only then would it be considered to be working.
When asked what was being done with all the several inventions by the ministry, Mamora said, “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 another.
“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.”
He also noted that the ministry’s gradual steps may be slow.
“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 is so many outputs that are still gathering dust on the shelves of various agencies.
“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 also looking at how we can compel, as it were, a little bit of legislation that once these things are available particularly if they are protected because we also need to protect the intellectual property, we can just push them to the markets.
“So, the challenge is about getting investors that will take these inventions 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 that we have developed taste that is not local. Rather, taste that is alien. We have this tendency to want to get something from abroad.
“Again, I think government will need to really come hard in terms of a total banning, as it were, of things that we have capacity to do locally. That is why nationalism comes in.
“So we are pushing it, we appreciate that. But we are not holding our arms because it’s not the best for us in this circumstance to just have inventions that are gathering dust on the shelves. So we are trying to do our best.”
