By Ebele Orakpo

Successful nations:

According to Prof. Peter Onwualu, if Nigeria invests in researchers and research institutions, she will join the league of successful nations. “Name any successful country and you discover that the bedrock of their success is research done by both government and private sector. The results of such researches actually fuel the economy. A country like China has used research to come up with new products it is exporting.

“For instance, more and more research is being done to improve on the telephone. When the mobile handset came out, it was just for making and receiving calls. Somebody did research and found they can incorporate a camera, video, clock, calculator, etc. These are all products of research and it is in all sectors of the economy,” he said.

Health: “Today, when Nigerians are seriously ill, they go abroad and you begin to wonder what the problem is? Is it that our medical doctors are not properly trained? No! We’ve seen evidence that they perform better than others when they go abroad. The only difference is that in Nigeria, they do not have access to technology.

It is difficult to get specialized equipment for cardiology, cancer detection, heart diseases etc because we are not doing enough research in the sector. Nobody is producing hospital equipment in Nigeria and because they are very costly, the average hospital in Nigeria cannot afford them. People are doing research on how to treat cancer with very high technology with little side effects.

Election: “In developed countries, it is almost impossible to rig elections because they use technology but in Nigeria, we have not been able to properly capture something as simple as biometrics. But with proper research to come up with the required technology, even if I am registered in Abuja, I should be able to vote anywhere.

“What research does in a community is unimaginable and the problem we have in Nigeria is that we have not paid adequate attention to research. The Federal Government has been trying because the innovation/research sector in Nigeria is huge, the biggest in Africa.”

Poor funding of research institutes:

“Why is it that with all these institutions, we are not benefitting from the result of research? Over the years, the research institutions have not been properly funded and so they have not grown to keep pace with the times. Some of the laboratories are outdated and so the researchers are not able to do the kind of research they are supposed to be doing; researchers don’t get enough funds to do research that can impact the society.

Part of the problem is that most of these research institutes are funded by government and we have all seen that it is impossible for government to do everything. The private sector has not been forthcoming in terms of supporting researchers and yet, they are the beneficiaries of some of these research works. Unfortunately, most of the big industries that should be supporting research have their R&D base in their parent countries.

That is why many of them shy away from supporting research. Otherwise, if they have problems, they will run to researchers who can investigate the problem and proffer solution,” he stated.

Investing in commercialisation:

“Part of what I have been doing at NUC is to look at the models of research-industry relationships that can work and promote commercialisation. Many of these results from our research institutes are still in the labs and workshops. They get caught up in what is called the valley of death. You develop something and just at the point of getting it to the market, it falls into the valley of death and that is the end.

“That is why you hear that Mr. A invented a car and before you know it, the story dies down. It is because a researcher comes up with an idea/product, and to get it into the market, he must have a factory where it will be manufactured and that is a different thing altogether, investing in commercialisation.

Concept of triple helix:

“In 2014, I did a research to come up with policies that can bring researchers and industry together which resulted in what we call the Concept of the triple helix. This means there are three groups of people that must work together in a helix form – government, researchers and industry/entrepreneurs. The reasons collaboration among the three has not been very strong are:

Trust: A lot of industrialists hide under trade secret and don’t open their doors to people, including researchers. The developed world has solved this problem through intellectual property, trademarks etc. Once you have a very good intellectual property regime, if a researcher is going to work with an industry, they sign non-disclosure documents so that if you come into the factory and you see some trade secrets, you don’t go and reveal them.

At the same time, if the researcher comes up with something that is patentable, it will be patented and the industry cannot steal the idea from him. Once you have that legal framework, people can work together.”

R&D: “Many industries are not ready to spend money on product development; they are more interested in just producing and making profit. We found that in other places, government uses some policy incentives to encourage industries to spend money on research. If you are producing A and every year you make N1 billion profit which is taxed, if we have a policy that says you can devote 10 per cent of the N1b on looking for ways to improve the product and get tax rebate for doing that, it becomes an incentive for the industry and many will be happy to comply.

“We also recommended one scheme called Knowledge Transfer Scheme where an industry and a research institution form a partnership. Example, an industry that produces fruit juice wants to come up with a new product – mixed fruits. They need to do some research.

“Under this partnership, a researcher in food science, food technology or food engineering can leave the university for six months or more and be resident in the factory, working to come up with this new product.

“Once he succeeds and they are producing, he goes back to his university. This way, he gains a lot of practical knowledge which will improve his teaching; at the same time, the industry has benefited from his knowledge. It is a win-win situation. But for this to work, somebody has to pick up the bills and since most industries may not want to pay, this is where government can come in. Government can pay or if the industry pays, government can reduce their tax.

“If this is followed through, these industries can begin to look at how to add value to our natural resources and then the economy will naturally grow, you will have more and more industries springing up, creating jobs, processing our raw materials and when these industries are thriving, they pay tax. So in our national budget, you will not only see crude oil, you will also see corporate tax from industries operating within the economy.

Wake-up call:

“So I believe that research has a lot to contribute towards the development of the Nigerian economy. This is the time for us as a nation to wake up.

As an engineer, I can pick a phone and within 30 minutes, I can tear it apart and bring it back together. If I am able to do that, it means I can make a phone but how do I do that? I must have those machines required to couple them together and these are machine tools which we are not yet producing here.