The Ministers of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya onu and Mohammed Abdullahi, were Wednesday presented with a special report on repositioning Science Technology and Innovation (STI) sector of the nation’s economy.
Onu stated that Nigeria should start thinking differently and develop self confidence to rely on self-services, realising that the development of the nation lies to make Nigeria a truly great nation.
Onu stated this during the presentation of a report on strengthening and repositioning of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology by the Ministerial Committee in Abuja.
“As a nation, we must have the capacity to produce our needs if we must grow in form of training and educating our people and build a peaceful and secured nation and only STI can help us achieve all these. Today, many countries are into recession and many more countries would still go into recession and to move to recovery stage will lie to a large extent on STI.
“This is also important in the area of job creation. Before the COVID 19, there was an effort on employment of all citizens, but because of the effect on the society, unemployment grew beyond measures and this report is a need to apply STI in the development of the nation,” the minister stated.
The FMST boss further assured Nigerians that the ministry would work hard to develop home-grown solutions and that the pandemic is a wakeup call for the Nigeria’s economy to rely on self-services. He added that the report to strengthen the ministry and the nation is in demand of every citizen to fight and defeat poverty.
Chairman of the committee, Mr. Abayomi Oguntunde stated that no nation can develop without STI adding that recently in a conference; Mr. President gave a speech saying that the problem of Nigeria was poverty, diseases and technology backwardness and that the reason for this appraisal was important having many other nations involving STI in developing their economy.
Sequent to this, he said Nigerian STI was in urgent need of rebranding and therefore lauded the minister of state and the permanent secretary for their push to achieve the report presented by his team.
Earlier in his opening remarks, the permanent secretary, FMST Dr. Mohammed Bello Umar, said the involvement of science is very wide and that in the course duty, they involved stakeholders from different sectors which today bringing a comprehensive report on deck by the committee.
