Where lies the solution to the economic recession? In research, say experts, who urge the government to tap into the works of researchers OLUWATOYIN ADELEYE reports
It is no longer news that Nigeria is in a recession. Getting out of it is the major task confronting the government which has been exploring optisms to get the economy back on track. To experts, Nigeria should begin to look inward for its economic revivals pills.
They spoke of the need to reverse the import-export imbalance that leaves Nigeria dependent on foreign goods at a exorbitant cost.
Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi (FIIRO), Director-General Dr Gloria Elemo said at a biotechnology conference held at the Covenant University that the imbalance was costing Nigeria so much, especially as the value of naira continues to fall.
She said local research could provide solutions to the imbalance and called for investment in such efforts.
But, beyond investments, she said Nigerians and the local industry must have faith in made-in-Nigeria goods.
“There is no biotechnology industry in Nigeria. No human vaccine is produced in Nigeria. We import everything. The government spends about N12 billion annually on vaccine importation and $3.6 billion annually on imported enzymes, which we create at the institute. We are just making other nations rich. Have we ever imagined a Nigeria where standardised products are developed locally from our readily available plants and herbs?”
Emphasising that Nigeria’s problems could not be solved without research, Dr Elemo added: “National development aims at raising the standard of living through increasing income, better education, more jobs, among others. A country’s potential for economic growth is greatly influenced by its endowment in terms of physical and human resources. There is no way you can create jobs without creating industries, industries without innovation and innovation cannot come without research. The time when research efforts could not solve Nigeria’s problem is now over.”
Last week, some academic staff of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) displayed competitive research works that can solve local problems.
Professor of Engineering, David Esezobor believes that his thermal food processing food chamber can increase the scale of drying food without the attendant health hazards associated with local drying methods.
Fish or other foods for drying could be hung horizontally in the chamber which rotates while drying.
He said his chamber would make stock/dry fish produced in Nigeria more acceptable for export as well as increase their shelf life. What is more, he said the chamber is environmentally friendly because it uses agro-forestry waste for energy.
Esezobor said: “This is a novel thermal drying technology for food processing. It can process variety of food products such as meat, fish, snail, bush meat at the same time. It has a high capacity of up to three to 4.5 metritons per batch. That means if the average kg for fish is 1.5 kg, then in a batch, you can process 3,000 fish and retain their by-products of cod liver oil for further processing.
“I was inspired to build this chamber because of the difficulty in preserving food products. You see these fish farmers, after harvesting their products, and they have a great harvest, they would not be able to preserve them and there would be spoilage. But with this product, you can preserve your food for up to two years and they can even be exported.
“If you look at the chemical analysis, they are of very high quality. The chemical quality of the traditional method of smoking fish is cancerous, due to incomplete combustion of the fuel, when they use firewood, charcoal, and others. This product is here to address that issue. It is also not manually operated and the fuel is cheap (agroforestry waste). It rotates by itself, while the fish hangs from the top so you just close the chamber and wait for the required number of time and the product would be processed all around.”
Boosting local production of goods and services and improved infrastructure will help Nigeria become more self-sufficient, said Mr Bello Mustapha, a social scientist.
His research work on Infrastructure and Industrial Sector Performance showed that factors like poor roads, poor electricity supply and others do not have as much damning effect on low-level productivity as believed. On the contrary, Mustapha said corruption and government policies had more debilitating effect on productivity.
“There is the popular belief that infrastructural service should have a strong impact on industrial and manufacturing performance of a country. In this study, we discovered that electricity generation, telephone usage, road infrastructure, among others, actually have a very limited impact on the manufacturing industry. Any good road would have a positive impact on industry performance, but it is actually quite insignificant, because it does not enhance the manufacturing capacity of the industries in Africa. Rather, factors like control of corruption, government policies, among others are the major factors that affect the manufacturing industry,” he said.
To address the problem, Mustapha, a Ph.D student, said the government ought to formulate development-friendly policies, while addressing corruption which undermined them.
High level of youth unemployment is a factor of socio-economic underdevelopment. This is exacerbated by lack of skills or limited opportunities to gain technical and entrepreneur skills.
Dr Ayodele Ogunleye and Dr Blessing Anyanwu believe that this can be addressed by leveraging on technology to provide access to knowledge to many more youths than the conventional education system.
The duo came up with an online entrepreneurship university that would allow students to be trained by industry experts with ease.
Ogunleye said: “Our vision is to help build a fully industrialised Nigerian society through our entrepreneurship educational training programmes for the award of diplomas and degrees. The aim is to ensure that we develop the entrepreneurship skills of all Nigerians so that they can pursue solely entrepreneurship courses without having to show up physically. Many universities have entrepreneurship embedded in their curriculum but this one is focused purely on a full entrepreneurship degree.”
The associate professor explained that the students would also get hands-on one-on-one sessions in laboratories built at strategic points from time to time.
For Dr Blessing Anyikwa, an adult education expert, the economic well-being of Nigeria is dependent on the well-being of farmers who produce the food that feeds the nation.
With limited education and access to technology, Dr Anyikwa said the contributions of farmers to the GDP, particularly rice farmers in Abia State, whom she studied, would also be limited.
To address the limitation, Dr Anyikwa has come up with a curriculum to hone the skills of farmers, who need a peculiar kind of education because of their nomadic nature.
She said: “These farmers are not really educated formally and because they migrate, it is difficult for them to have any formal education. So I had a timing model executed for them, a curriculum prepared and intervention programme on how to train them to read and write as well as learn how to build new technology on rice production. It is known that people from that area eat ofada rice and because they don’t have technique for the modern way of serving rice, there is a lot of stone in it. But the intervention is for the creation of modern rice processing technology. That way, they will have increase in production, which increases their income and a better socio-economic life.
“Also, If the intervention is done on a larger scale, it turns Nigeria around. We don’t have to depend on foreign foods. And we would have more of such rice at cheaper price, which is far more nutritious than imported rice.”
For the industry to have faith in local research, however, Chairman, Vitafoam Nigeria PLC, Dr Bamidele Makanjuola, said Nigerian researchers ought to be more disciplined about following through with their work.
Makanjuola, while delivering the keynote address at the UNILAG annual research conference and fair last week, said many researchers discouraged private organisations from investing in their works because they often abandoned the project midway.
Makanjuola shared disappointing examples of his organisation’s experience working with local researchers, who failed to complete their part of the bargain.
He said: “Between 2010 and 2012, two leading universities were engaged to research the local extraction and refining of castor oil. Vitafoam committed a substantial amount of money to the projects, with no tangible outcome. Eventually, the institutions unceremoniously abandoned the project.
“Most recently, one of Vitafoam’s subsidiaries (Vitapur Nig. Ltd) needed to generate some technical data for its marketing communication materials. Samples of our manufactured insulated materials were passed on to a university faculty that had the technical competency to handle the assignment. Despite ready availability of funds, the job remained uncompleted for over 18 months. The contract has since been re-awarded to a laboratory in South Africa.”
However, Makanjuola said his firm still had faith in Nigerian researchers and technicians. He said efforts were being made to improve industry-varsity partnership.
“Vitafoam is currently attempting to restructure its strategic approach to building a more-enduring relationship with tertiary institutions like yours (UNILAG),” he said.
