Research’s meaningless unless…- TETFund boss

The executive secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Prof. Suleiman Elias Bogoro, has said that research had no meaningful impact “unless the outcome helps to better the society.”

He stated this in an exclusive interview with Blueprint in his office Friday.

Prof. Bogoro said “Nigerian scholars should not just publish journals for people to clap hands for them,” adding that under him TETFund “discourages a large volume of journals published in the university system whose outcomes change nothing.”

He said further that Nigerians desired to see research that would be able to solve the practical problems of society, stressing that “for example, kidney transplant in our teaching hospitals or research that makes health care delivery meaningful. “

Towards this, he said, TETFund had inaugurated research committees with members from different backgrounds.

“So, for the Fund to have meaningful research we invited industrialists into research committees; nearly one third of our research committee members are industrialists. This is the first time Nigeria is doing that. Research outcome and undertaking of research is meaningless if we are not looking at those that have a stake in research outcomes; these are the industries, research institutes, private sector and others. That is where the money is. They want to have value addition from research on their products that they can make available, including the agriculture sector.

“It is only through research that we can bring value addition, including improvement of what we call productivity in agriculture for both crops and livestock. It is through research that Nigeria is producing a lot of yams and cassava as the second largest in the world. At some point, we were even the number one for cassava production, but what value addition are we getting from it through researchers in chemistry, biochemistry, nutrition; value addition as engineers coming in with their perspectives, and so on and so forth?”

Continuing, he said, “In defence and security, for instance, we are talking of unmanned aerial vehicles. As it were, there are different types – single purpose or multi-purpose as I spoke of recently in a hard copy interview on Channels Television.”

The TETFund boss said further that “some of these innovative technologies being witnessed today are only done through research; meaningful, applicable research that is able to make a difference.”

He said the era when Nigerian researchers were only theoreticians was gone, emphasising that under him, “Nigeria is placing more emphasis on knowledge-based economy as is the standard practice globally.”

“We are saying that we shouldn’t continue to be theoreticians for too long, especially those from the university system whom people say are full of grammar without action. This is what we are doing to make a difference.”