Nigeria’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu has said that Nigeria has made a tremendous breakthrough in import reduction, by ‘cumulatively saving N5.03 trillion from 2017 to 2020’
The Minister made the statement on Friday, March 18, at the closing ceremony of the STI EXPO 2022 in Abuja.
He said the figures were based on the data by the United Nations Harmonised System Code and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Dr. Onu said that due to advancement in STI, the nation has become a home for start-ups, and technology has been transferred to many of the nation’s MSME’S (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) which has, in turn, reduced dependency on technology and foreign man power imports.
He said; “Nigeria has become a home of start-ups. Using one of our agencies, the National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI), which has branches in all the States of the Federation, technologies developed locally are transferred to many of our entrepreneurs. Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are springing up in many parts of the country.”
He added that the country has made a lot of progress in the development of new drugs and they are at different levels of certification including clinical trials.
In the areas of agriculture and food security, Dr. Onu said that through research and innovation, efforts are ongoing to provide food security as well as agro raw materials.
On gender balance and sensitivity, He said; “We embarked on gender-sensitive programmes to make STI inclusive, so as to improve the participation of girls and women in scientific research and innovation activities.”
