By Ime Bassey
Dr. Sylvanus Nwafili, a senior lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt,  UNIPORT, has said that if attention was not paid to research, Nigeria will lose focus and might never attain its full potentials.

Speaking in a lecture at the induction and award of fellows of Institute of Administrators and Researchers of Nigeria, IARN, at the University of Lagos, he said: “Nigeria is a state without vision and is drifting away from attaining its full potentials if more attention is not paid on quality research.

“What constitutes the Nigerian dreams or what are the dreams we collectively have as a nation? How can our visions transform potentials into industries, good schools, food and wealth?”

He urged the Federal Government to pay the price of joining the comity of developed nations by “increasing research spending above one per cent.”

of her GDP and preferably closer to 1.5 per cent to raise any hope of jump-starting the economy as compared to South Korea’s 1.55 per cent, Taiwan-China’s 1.97 and Singapore’s 1.47 per cent.”