STI indicators, auditing, key to monitor, evaluate Nigeria’s performance globally – Onu

The Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu, says Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) indicators and auditing are key to monitoring and evaluation of Nigeria’s performance globally.

Onu said this in his remarks during Stakeholders Workshop on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators and Technology Audit of Selected Economic Sectors in Nigeria on Monday in Abuja, organised by National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM).

Represented by Mr Suleiman Ibrahim, the Director, Planning and Research, Policy Analysis in the ministry, Onu said that developing science, technology and innovation indicators for Nigeria would make it possible for the nation to monitor and evaluate its performance against other African nations and globally.

He said “the indicators will afford us the opportunity to benchmark our performance against development targets and perform foresight analysis of future competitiveness as a nation.

“STI audit is vital for effective national planning and can only have meaningful development on a country’s economic development if the country is able to ascertain its state of development.

“The audit will reveal the state of development, acquisition and utilisation of technology in the country and identify relevant technologies for sustainable development.”

The minister explained that such audit would also address the issues of barriers to utilisation and develop framework and action plan toward exploiting technologies for Nigeria’s development.

Onu, therefore, urged the workshop participants to contribute their quota to national development so as to bring about the change that all Nigerians aspired for.

Prof. Okechukwu Ukwuoma, the Director-General of NACETEM, said “the world is changing due to rapid advancement in technology and we cannot afford to be left behind.”

The director general stressed the need for government to “scan the global technology space and determine where we were, establish where we need to be and chart a pathway to take us there.

“These cannot be be done without robust consultations, desk research, data gathering and analysis.

“This workshop is a forum to fine-tune the questionnaires meant to identify the gaps with a view to competing favourably with other nations of the world.

“It is our hope in terms of developing globally acceptable STI indicators and making the nation’s technology competitive in the world.”

He added that auditing would enable Nigeria to know the requisite expertise, instrument, infrastructure “to be able to go where we want to go technologically.”

Okwuoma said that the key sectors that the audit would cover were agriculture, health, mining and environment.

In a goodwill message, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, the Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), said the workshop was a laudable initiative.

Represented by Dr Esther Orji of NUC, Rasheed said the workshop would create huge market to openly shop for research-based ideas.

He added that “it is also a huge market for dialogue on how to build a convergence between theory and practice in efforts to push the boundaries of research and development in our society.

“It is in line with the current vision of the NUC to work very closely with our universities to fine-tune our higher education curriculum.

“It is also aimed at ensuring that graduates of our education institutions are intellectually and technologically equipped to face dynamics of today’s industrial and ICT driven development age.’’

The workshop has in attendance stakeholders in the science and technology sector, both in the private and public domain.