By Akoma Chinweoke
Former director general, Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), Prof Anya O. Anya, in this interview, speaks on how increased funding of basic scientific research can accelerate  growth of the economy

Anya

Part of the problems hindering the country’s industrial revolution is its inability to utilize scientific results for economic benefits.  How can this gap be bridged?

Let me in fact say that discussions are on-going on this important issue and there is going to be a stakeholders meeting involving industries, Nigeria Academy of Science and the Ministry of Science and Technology on how to build a framework which would enable the Nigerian science to impact on its industries.

Let me also point out a mistake that Nigerians always make when they think about how we utilize scientific reports. Until you make the results of science and technology marketable in the sense that they can produce products that can appear in the market, the work of science has not been finished.

But it is not the job of the scientist to bring the product of his work onto the market because there is a process. When I have my beautiful result that shows that certain things can happen at the last level, that has to be upscaled to an industrial level.

You find that by the time you are upscaling, the rule that applies may no longer be the simple rules that applied in the last. It is the job of the scientist and the technologist to now devise a new rule but to do that he needs to be encouraged and that is the job of the government because it is no longer a matter of research.

Even when you have upscaled it and it shows that it has industrial application, you still have to have the prototype that will raise  the normal condition for production and when that has been sentenced broadly and shown to the public, that is when the investor is now interested in it.

An investor is not a person who takes risk neither is he a gambler. It is only when he knows that if he puts his money here, this is what is going to come out of it. Until you get to that point, it is the government that has to fund that whole process and when that now comes in, the private sector can now take it up from there. An empirical result shows that when you invest in ten scientific results if at all you have the venture capital, as people most times take risk to invest in scientific results not knowing what to expect,  of the three that succeed, they will not only pay for all the expenses of the firm but will give you a 70-100 percent result.

This is why countries invest  huge money on scientific research because they know that once they get a successful application, the return to the economy will be many times over and cause boom in the economy. But in Nigeria, there is that gap between the scientific results that are applicable and upscaling them to the point that they can now be exploited and utilized for economic growth.

We are using the science prize as an example . The work of the first winner of the prize has to do with research in real- time leak detection in a network of pipelines, or other flow systems carrying liquids . Don’t forget that in Nigeria pipelines and what happens there is important because we pipe the crude from Port-Harcourt to Kaduna and then it is of interest in Nigeria to know that you can pipe all those things and be able to detect faults and deal with it.

In other words, the scientist has done the work that has to be done in order to improve the economy but the gap is thinking of putting it together so that these things can now be raised to the point of its possibility and that is the job of the government Unfortunately the government is not doing it and that is the missing link.

How then do you think the government can key  into scientific results to fast track the growth of the economy?
Well, it works both ways. The scientists have to let people know what they are doing and its potentials.

The government has to identity those things that are their potentials and develop them further to the point where they can be taken to the market place so that the industries should now be able to invest in it  as venture capitals, before they actually take these results now into the market place. So you don’t only need the scientists, government and the industries but you need all of them working together.

Some people have described the country’s dream of becoming one of the top 20 economies in the world by the year 2020 as a huge joke. Do you share their view?

I don’t think it is a mere joke. Anybody who is so cynical to say any dream or vision is a joke is himself a joke . The reason is that as human beings, it is part of us to hope that tomorrow would be better than today and therefore you have a plan towards that .

That’s what it is. But for Vision 20:2020 to be alive requires the mobilization of every Nigerian to buy into the vision and see it as its own and see his future tied up with its success. Unfortunately, I don’t think that is being done sufficiently but then we are still at the beginning.  May be now that they have finished the planning, they would have to undertake the process of selling it.

It is obvious that this is not the first time we are having a vision, why do you think this one will not be a mirage?
Let me say the reason I hope this one would work is because we are desperate . We have burnt up all our opportunities . Nigeria, after 50 years, should we be where we are? Compare us with countries like Malaysia ,South Korea, and Taiwan that were behind us then.

So, have we done well? If we have not done well, it means we are right now at the bottom where we ought not and as they say he who is down needs fear no fall. You can only go up, you can’t go further down
What impact do you think the Nigeria science prize sponsored by LNG would create on the country’s  economy?
The prize should affect the young ones when they see the work of 20 years being rewarded.

They would now realized that the little effort you made over the years if you are persistent will one day have its reward . Also, because it now brings you in touch with some of the names you been hearing but did not know, it inspires you and you want to be like them and would want to, one day, do more than they have done because that’s how societies are built.

This generation passed on the shoulders of the previous generations to move ahead. Some of us became scientists and university lectures because people like Prof. Joseph Chike Edozien, J.P. the Asagba of Asaba, we used to see him as a student and the way he conducted himself made us to say that’s the kind of life we want.

In any nation that young people cannot dream, see visions beyond the immediate environment, and do not have role models they can look up to, that society really can’t grow. Take Britain for example, in Cambridge, students still occupy the room that Isaac Newton occupied as a student and as a student when you go in there, you now know that you have a challenge if that man was once a student like you, the challenge is for you to do if possible more.

But unfortunately in Nigeria, we have not made a good job of harnessing the vision and dreams of our young people and encouraging them. We have not made a good job of being role models and that is where the media is important because the role models they are always advertising are not the best.

There are Nigerians who have done great things for this country and nobody is talking about them So, my appeal is that the media should step back a little and link up once more with our history . A society is not only about making money, politics and noise making.