Secretary General of the Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions (ASURI), Dr. Theophilus Ndubuaku, says the federal government can solve the problem of unemployment and other socio-economic crises facing the nation only if it takes the bull by the horns.
According to ASURI scribe, the short cut out of these challenges is for the government to develop the political will to change its attitude to research which he claimed would create employment opportunities and keep everyone meaningfully and gainfully employed.
Speaking to Blueprint in Friday Abuja, Dr. Ndubuaku said research would create jobs, wipe out poverty and make crime and brigandage less attractive to the citizens.
He described unemployment as the mother of poverty, which drives people into banditry, kidnapping, insurgency, prostitution and other social vices.
The researcher of over 36 years said when other nations run into problems, they turn to research for solutions, adding regrettably that Nigeria looks elsewhere.
“Last year when the whole world was engulfed in the Covid-19 pandemic, they turned to their researchers for urgent solution and we can see the result,” he said.
“But here, it’s a different ball game altogether, in spite of the fact that we have mandate research institutes covering every facet of life.”
Dr. Ndubuaku wondered why Nigeria, which has a research think tank, the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), located right in the Central Business Area of Abuja, is not being involved in the search for peace and negotiations with bandits and insurgents, adding that these problems are peculiar to Nigeria where, according to him, we don’t value for what we have.
The labour leader who is a member of both the Central Working Committee and National Executive Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), said it is such a shame that with all the natural blessings that the nation is endowed with, such that it is only the United States that compares with Nigeria, we have degenerated to being labelled the poverty capital of the world.
He said hope is not however lost and that the situation could be turned around only if the nation could change its attitude towards research and researchers, whom he described as the poorest among federal workers.
It would be recalled that the President of the National Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN), Comrade Solomon Adodo, in collaboration with other representatives of the civil society who gathered at the recent annual Science and Technology Expo at the Eagle Square in Abuja, called on the federal government to give the needed attention to research institutions.
