Don decries Nigeria’s tech backwardness

A lecturer at the Delta State University (DELSU), Dr Ebere Adigbuo, has frowned at Nigeria’s continued importation of knocked down parts of automobiles.

He regretted that Nigeria is possibly “the only nation that cannot pride itself of a state vehicle”.

Adigbuo added: “It is disturbing and saddening that years after our independence, we still import every brand of vehicles.”

The don spoke in Lagos when he delivered a paper: Contemporary International System Aligning Technology with Nigeria’s Foreign Policy, at the seventh annual lecture of Centre for Constitutionalism and Demilitarisation (CENCOD).

The lecture, organised by a popular activist, Professor Sylvester Odion-Akhaine, drew participants from some ivory towers and intellectuals from the organised labour.

They included Dr Ayodeji Ige, of Department of Law, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State; Chief Abiodun Sowunmi and Miss Funmi Ziyadah Edu of Lagos State University (LASU).
Adigbuo decried a situation where some countries, such as Britain, send goods as dane guns, spirits, mirrors, to Nigeria, even after independence till date.

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The don noted that this drove home the nation’s technological backwardness in a globally advanced situation.
“The truth about this matter was that Nigerians were involved in all aspects of economic and industrials endeavours.

Outstanding innovations were made by Africans in traditional irons, woods, ivory arts as well as indigenous medicine. Most of the techniques involved in these processes were, however, either disorientated or discontinued though environmentally friendly (Okpoko and Eze Adichie 1999),” he said.

Adigbuo stressed that Nigeria’s continued lack of technological innovations was best captured by the submission of the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Ogbonna Onu, who once maintained that the nation’s production of petroleum oil and further exploration of new oil fields rested heavily on revenue generation from foreign technology.