By TINA FAWOLE

Before its establishment in the 60s, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, looked up to the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN), also in Ibadan, as its model.

Today, IITA lives up to its billing as a world-class research institute in name, infrastructure and delivery on mandate. Yet its model, CRIN, a victim of policy summersault like many of the other almost 150 research and allied institutes in Nigeria, is in a sorry state of infrastructural decay and near-zero allocation for research, its score mandate.

The Nigerian media are awash with reports about the parlous state of research institutes, leadership tussles, industrial unrest, lock-outs and almost endless picketing. In most cases, political leaders in government worsen the cases through partisanship and utter disregard for extant rules in the appointment of chief executives for the institutes. In such appointments, political appointees and topnotch technocrats in the supervising ministries go outside the system to install people who know little or nothing about the agencies they are appointed to lead, thereby straying away from the mandates of such institutions and frustrating career researchers, thus leading to low morale among key personnel.

Over and above all of these, official neglect, as it manifests in poor funding, has been the bane of the nation’s research and development institutes (RDIs). And this, according to experts, is why Nigeria is where she is today. This, indeed, has been the song of the Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions (ASURI), which represents the interests of researchers in federal RDIs, colleges of agriculture and forestry, allied institutions and centres over the years.

The union claims that such national evils as “high unemployment rate, mass poverty and hunger, resulting in insecurity, insurgency, assassinations, ritual killings, cybercrime, kidnapping, prostitution, human trafficking and slavery, mass emigration, maternal and child mortality and low life expectancy of 54.5 years” are results of the neglect of research and researchers.

The nation’s lack – and sometimes loss – of focus with regards to research was described by the publisher of This Mandate, the late Pastor Bola Oregbemi, a research-centric advocate of national development, as “a graveyard of policy somersault.” His view was corroborated by the chairman of the Senate Committee on Science and Technology, Senator (Professor) Robert Ajayi Boroffice, a well-respected research scientist and former two-time director general of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA).

“Changes,” according to Boroffice, “were carried out by the whims and caprices of those in charge. Those changes destabilized the system and often left it battered and fractured to the extent that the sector was seriously incapacitated from being a strategic tool for national development.”

Indeed, the main challenge facing R&D in Nigeria, according to Professor Oye Ibidapo-Obe, former vice chancellor of the University of Lagos and former president of the Nigeria Academy of Science (NAS), is lack of focus which he says results in policy somersault, and not funding.

Speaking in his capacity as guest lecturer at the Round-table on Research Funding, a one-day talk shop that took place in Abuja, last April 18, Ibidapo-Obe cited the universities of agriculture and the universities of technology as examples. He said these tertiary institutions were originally established under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology respectively, with specific objectives of liaising with the ministries but were soon absorbed into the Federal Ministry of Education.

This policy U-turn, he said, denied the nation what he called a “scientific culture.”
From one stakeholder to the other, it is a tale of woe. “I cannot name any of our research institutes that is adequately tooled to conduct and sustain ground-breaking studies in their areas of mandate to solve many of the problems facing the Nigerian society,” according to a former executive secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Peter Okebukola, who is also a former vice chancellor of the Lagos State University. “What kind of research should we expect from an institute with laboratories laden with antiquated and analogue equipment, with epileptic supply of electricity and water? Research infrastructure also includes library resources which are in sorry state in most of the institutes.”

As if to corroborate Okebukola’s opinion about the parlous state of laboratories, former executive director of CRIN, Dr. Feyisara Okelana, lamented the state of his institute’s facilities. “We have a central laboratory that we are building and we need money to complete it,” he said. “We need to equip it to reach the standard that we have in the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana.”

In terms of the Biblical refrain that unto whom much is given, much is expected, Nigeria has failed woefully. In spite of her abundant natural, mineral and human resources, Nigeria has been rated as the poverty capital of the world, having failed to add value to its vast natural resources.

The need to have a different orientation about research was the meat of the keynote address of the secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, at the Roundtable on Research Funding. Speaking through his representative at the forum, Mr. Gabriel Aduda, the permanent secretary (political and economic matters) in the Office of the SGF, Mr. Mustapha said the whole world has moved on because of huge investment in R&D while Africa remains where she is because of her attitude to research.
“Without research you can multiply in quantity but you cannot multiply in quality,” he said. “Without research you can maintain what you have but you cannot move forward.

“We lose large volumes of agricultural produce daily and yearly because we cannot add value to the value chain. We keep producing but nobody processes yet nobody cares about storage facilities. The value you add to the provision which God has given determines the profit we get from the effort.”

The one-day talk shop, which took place at the Abuja International Conference Centre, was organized by ASURI, in collaboration with Co-Heritage Hunters and TF and Associates, an image and events management company which publishes R&D Watch. By design, the talk shop was an appreciation event to commend the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration for taking the bold initiative to inaugurate the National Research and Innovation Council (NRIC) and the Eighth National Assembly for passing the National Research and Innovation Council (Establishment) Bill which aimed at giving legal muscle to the all-important Council. It was also aimed at raising the tempo of the discourse on the need to adequately fund research.

While re-inaugurating the council, of which he is chairman, on 7 January 2016, Buhari said he hoped the development would transform Nigeria into “a centre of discoveries, inventions and innovation in all fields of science and technology,” adding that Nigeria should, before long, be in a position to produce Nobel Laureates in the sciences. He saw NRIC accelerating the growth of innovation-based entrepreneurship in the country. It is on record that it was President Buhari’s immediate predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who actually inaugurated the council on 18 February 2014.

The NRIC Bill, sponsored by the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Senator David Umaru, was co-sponsored by 50 other senators. However, citing some technical inadequacies in the legislative document, the President declined assent to the bill and returned it to the National Assembly for rectification.
ASURI rose to the occasion of providing technical back-up to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters by interfacing with the committee to iron out the grey areas identified by Mr. President. Through a letter, “Our Input on the Grey Areas in the National Research and Innovation Council (Establishment) Bill,” dated 28 November 2018, the union suggested the forward. The letter was signed by its secretary general, Dr. Theophilus Ndubuaku, who has been leading his union’s drive towards actualizing the NRIC altruistically.

In addition to this effort, the minister of science and technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, inaugurated a committee of key stakeholders to look into the grey areas spotted by Mr. President and to advise on the way forward. The committee, which was inaugurated on January 8, 2019, was asked to look at the Bill dispassionately from the perspectives of the members’ constituencies, address the issues raised by Mr. President and make other recommendations that would assist in the assent to the Bill. Members of the committee, which was given one month to submit its report, were:

1. The president of the Nigeria Academy of Science, Professor Mosto Onuoha (Chairman)
2. The president of Nigeria Academy of Engineering, Professor Fola Lasisi
3. The president of Nigeria Academy of Letters, Professor Francis Egbokhare;
4. Former executive secretary of the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), Professor B. Y. Abubakar;
5. The director general of the National Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI), Professor Danladi Slim Matawal;
6. The secretary general of the Academic staff Union of Research Institutions (ASURI), Dr. Theophilus Ndubuaku;
7. The CEO of TF & Associates and publisher of R&D Watch, Mr. Toye Fawole;
8. The president of Nigerian Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI), Mr. Solomon Daniel Vongfa;
9. The technical adviser to the minister of science and technology, Engr. Ibiam Ogueijiofo;
10. Former director general of the National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI), Vom, Professor L. H. Lombin;
11. The senior special assistant to the president on research, documentation and legal matters, Professor Adamu Kyuka Usman; and
12. Barrister (Mrs.) Yvonne U. Odu-Thomas (secretary).

From all intents and purposes, the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration is set to end the lack of institutionalized mechanism for research funding which has tied the nation’s hand of development since independence. Even though it is well known that no serious country funds research with budgetary allocations, yet that is what Nigeria has relied on for the funding of its over 100 research and development institutions, colleges of agriculture and forestry, allied agencies and centres, thus running on the same spot and paying lip service to growth and development over the years.

Indeed, it is not that Nigeria lacked policy direction on the way forward; the political will to move forward is just what has been lacking over the years. Gingered by the United Nations through UNESCO, Nigeria formulated its National Policy on Science and Technology in 1966, the same year such countries as South Korea, Malaysia, India, Australia, Brazil and South Africa, among others, initiated their road maps on STI. Yet while those other nations activated their policies, Nigeria kept faith with mere paper work, reviewing, revising and re-wording its policy from time to time without the political will to take serious action. As of the last count, the policy had been reviewed 13 times by 2012.

Obviously the most audible voice in the drive towards institutionalized funding mechanism for research funding, ASURI has been laying the blames for Nigeria’s socio-economic woes on the doorstep of its failure to fund research and researchers. In its position paper to the minister of science and technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, whom the union revers as standing head and shoulders above his predecessors in moving STI forward, the union claims, “Our nation is currently bedeviled by high unemployment rate, mass poverty and hunger, resulting in insecurity, insurgency, assassinations, ritual killings, cyber-crime, kidnapping, prostitution, human trafficking and slavery, emigration, maternal and child mortality and life expectancy of 54.5 years (lowest in West Africa).”

ASURI claims that though Nigeria has been designated the poverty capital of the world, establishing the NRIC “is key to making our nation great again,” relying heavily on the claim by Emir of Kano, Alhaji Lamido Sanusi, who said during his tenure as the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria in 2013 that a nation that ignored research was on the path to peril. He was quoted by The Punch on July 25, 2013.

According to the researchers’ union, “neglect of research and science and technology (S&T) by successive Nigerian governments since independence is the underlying reason for the challenges of insecurity and other national malaise which are currently threatening to dismember the fabric of the Nigerian nation, thereby pushing the nation to the brink of a failed state. It is stated in the National Policy on Science and Technology of Nigeria, 1986 that “science and technology have been the critical instruments used to uplift the economy of any country…The springboard of science and technology is research…”

One cannot agree any less.