By Olusegun Ayeoyenikan
Something remarkable, perhaps unknown to many, happened recently in the Nigeria’s political economy sphere capable of beaming smiles on faces of even most ardent critics of President Muhammadu Buhari Administration on economic development issues.
It was the resolution by the National Economic Council (NEC) to look inwards for technical solutions to the myriads of socio-economic challenges faced by the nation which had led to poverty, unemployment, high crime rate amongst other social vices.
The decision by NEC in its Thursday 18th November, 2021 meeting chaired by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, was that all 36 State Governors in the federation should adopt home grown economic reform programmes via technology development as articulated by the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) as ways forward in developing the natural resources, human talents and potentials in various States. This decision by NEC, to public policy analysts, was a cherished impetus capable of steering the States effectively to develop the non-oil sector.
Also in a related development, during his speech at the just concluded 2nd Intra-African Trade Fair 2021 in Durban, South Africa, President Muhammadu Buhari, restated that the Nigerian economy under his administration was witnessing re-engineering, investment in technology innovation and general infrastructural development.
The President stressed that the implementation of Free Trade Zone (FTZs) by Africa would lead to doubling the continent’s trade in 10 years. He said that despite fall in oil prices as well as challenge of insecurity in parts of Nigeria, his administration was putting practicalities to the decision to invest in infrastructural development-based plans to help the country’s businesses to grow.
On his side, the VP while addressing the Economic Council said, going forward, NASENI is one of the Agencies to be used in achieving the overall developmental objectives of the government because the Agency had all it takes, both technical know-how and human capacity to provide alternative routes to current Nigeria’s economy driven by oil.
Recall that NEC was established by provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended; section 153 (1) and paragraphs 18, 19, of Part 1 of the Third Schedule. Inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari since 29th June, 2015, the Council is one of the highest policies making body in the executive arm of government chaired by the Vice President concerning economic affairs of the country particularly on measures necessary for coordination of economic planning efforts and programmes.
Its membership comprises of 36 State Governors, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, the Minister of Finance, Budget & National Planning and other coopted Government officials.
For several decades there had been hues and cries from every quarter on the need to diversify the Nigeria economy away from oil following its dwindling revenue in the global oil market occasioned partly by discovery of alternatives to fossil fuel as energy source used by countries to run economies. The irony of the situation nevertheless is that neither the cries for diversification nor hard criticism of both present and past governments have changed the reality of the fact that Nigeria’s oil revenue has continued to serve as the major source of the nation’s income for financing annual budgets.
Moving forward, in September 2009, the Vision 20:2020 economic transformation agenda was launched with the aim of diversifying the nation’s economy and growing such that Nigeria would move from its 95th position on the Global Competitiveness Index Ranking (in 2007), to the 20th position , within 10 years by 2020. But by the end of year 2020, the nation had sunk further down on the Global Competitiveness Index Ranking to the 115th position. Asking why? Amongst other factors, Nigeria did not tow the path of technology advancement cum the practical and technical routes taken by developed countries: Japan, Germany, USA, Canada, Singapore and China and many others who in the past found themselves in similar grim economic straits while citizens struggled with underdevelopment, poverty and unemployment.
The governments and people of those countries deliberately took steps to invest in research, science, technology, engineering and innovation to liberate their economies from relying on commodity economy, which is the case with most African countries including Nigeria. Commodity economies are countries that trade in primary produce or export of raw materials in the global market without process or value addition. Such nations have continued to suffer adverse economic effects whenever there were gluts and shakings in international market demands or during global economic recession.
One question that keeps reverberating is: What concrete steps did Nigeria take in the past to redirect the economy along routes which could free her from reliance on oil?
The import substitution policy of 1980s adopted by Nigeria government and introduction of IMF’s-Structural Adjustment programme (SAP) to stimulate the domestic productive activities could not lift sufficiently her economy in the upward curve. Aside corruption, SAP did not succeed because of so many factors. Some of the elements which caused the failure of SAP included consequent debt burdens incurred by Nigeria in importing machinery, equipment, technical know-how, components and spare parts and other processed raw materials used in import-substitution industries to support domestic production of goods and services; the inability of local industrial enterprises to produce substituted goods at a quality and competitive levels for exports to earn foreign exchange; and there was also the attendant problem of Nigeria becoming dumping grounds for all manners of obsolete foreign technologies. At the end, Nigeria domestic entrepreneurs reverted to less risky business of trading namely “buying, selling and distribution” of foreign produced goods. This marked the end and purpose of SAP as the country returned to consumptive import dependence economy funded with petro dollars.
In other words, the ultimate ways forward should have been to rebuild a truly Nigeria economy in this circumstance with the imperative of evolving an endogenous economic system. Thanks to the then Military President Ibrahim Babangida, who midwifed the establishment of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI). That is, NASENI was founded in 1992 to kick start a truly home-grown industrial economy, creation of wealth and job opportunities based on Nigerians own entrepreneurship capacity and drive, developed deliberately to use own science, engineering and human ingenuities to develop a truly national economy while utilizing local materials.
According to its mandate, it was to establish and nurture appropriate and dynamic science and engineering infrastructure base for achieving home initiated and home sustained industrialization through the development of relevant processes, capital goods and equipment necessary for job creation, national economic well-being and progress.
As a mark of commitment to the NASENI ideals by the IBB government, a one (1) % percent of revenue accruing to the Federation Account was to be dedicated as funding of the Agency and also stipulated later in its Establishment Act, 2004 CAP N3 Laws of The Federation of Nigeria.
Additional funding is expected to be derived from contribution of 0.25% of turnover of N100 million and above from commercial companies (“the Levy”), which shall be a tax-deductible expense. The Levy was to be collected by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) or by any other means as may be specified by the Agency amongst other funding sources.
Unfortunately, this provision was never implemented for about three (3) decades. The laws were not implemented and the Agency therefore never received the funds, a development which hampered its roles of turning the nation’s economy around or to begin the journey of Nigeria in the paths of industrialization and or knowledge-based economy.
The good news however is that President Buhari recently did not only direct the return of NASENI to the Presidency but also gave approval for the implementation of the law which gives one (1) percent of federal allocation to the Agency as its funding mechanism. As follow up, the National Economic Council resolved at its Thursday 18th November, 2021 meeting that NASENI should henceforth focus on assisting the 36 State Governors in providing reversed engineering on certain key components of machinery useful to them in revamping all dying industries and factories in the States while the Agency’s operation should be guided by its mandates to avoid duplication of efforts. Reverse engineering is the reproduction of already made machines or technology following detailed examination of the construction or composition by the original manufacturer.
Other resolutions of NEC are that: Nigeria needs to see inventions from NASENI on specific developmental issues as such; regular updates are needed in order to keep track of NASENI’S operations. The Economic Council also directed that NASENI should have a limited mandate as such; its mandate is undergoing continuous review. At the end of the meeting, the Vice President tasked the committee to come up with a framework for NASENI’s operations, monitoring, and to provide quarterly updates to NEC.
One may ask what all these would mean to both the micro and macro-economic systems of the country? Among several advantages, the industrialization efforts by State governments, private companies, small and medium enterprises (SMES) in the Nigeria will become a lot easier henceforth because the machines, equipment and technologies needed to convert natural resources in States into viable economic ventures will be produced locally by NASENI through the private sector participation and transfer of patented R&Ds results to private companies and industries thereby preventing mounting debt albatross of the 1980s SAP or the importation of obsolete machines, technologies and equipment to run factories in Nigeria.
There are two major fundamental ways through which a nation can truly attain socio-economic development and prosperity, they are technology and agriculture. Altogether, sustainable economic reform lies squarely in discoveries of new trends and innovation alongside implementation of economic plans hinged on modern technological advancement. As these new trends continue to evolve, nations are expected to key into exploration of fall-outs and benefits from innovations and technology advancements in order to achieve economic growth. These evolutions are usually supported by abundant evidences from different fields of scientific investigations. Other areas such as minerals resource (crude oil) and natural exploration are not sustainable except when combined with other trajectory of economic development strategies leading the nation to prosperity. With NASENI’s contribution to evolving a new and prosperous Nigeria, its current list of technology product developments and more research efforts into agricultural machines and production are the sure bets for sustainable economic development to the nation going forward.
NASENI has demonstrated undoubted capacities to domesticate technology either by requisition or through conceptual ideology. An example of the latter was the agency’s recent successful design of home-grown first made in Nigeria Electronic Voting solution (e-voting) which can conduct all Nigeria’s general elections perfectly through cloud computing, guaranteeing the country an electioneering process that is free, fair and devoid of human interference or incidences of snatching of ballot boxes. This is in addition to the availability of highly trained manpower at NASENI to provide technical backing to the evolution of Nigeria as a manufacturing nation.
It becomes poignant to ask: What has NASENI been doing currently across the 36 states of the federation? NASENI over the years has been carrying out research on the production of agricultural tools and machineries which has led to the production of different agricultural farming and food processing machines. Also, all NASENI’s ten (10) research & development institutes are located across various States, engaging in manufacturing of equipment locally for processing of raw materials. With the Agency’s rotary furnaces in various institutes, it has produced and manufactured agro-processing machines such as rice value chain equipment and multi-grain thresher, palm oil processing machines, cassava grater, integrated high quality cassava processing machines and others.
In other sectors, NASENI has demonstrated tremendous capacity to offer solutions in power and transportation. In the power sector, despite lean resources at its disposal, the Agency trained about sixty (60) engineers in China, all of them successfully returned to Nigeria for the production of locally made transformers and to run a high voltage testing laboratory.
NASENI designed and manufactured prototypes of first Made-in-Nigeria Smart Energy Prepaid Meters (SPEM), the Small Hydropower and Propeller turbines all for the improvement of power generation and distribution and many more. In the transport sector, the Agency recorded successful design and production of first Made-in-Nigeria tricycles “KEKE NASENI” (passenger & Cargo types).
Also, in order to ensure that the KEKE prototypes and technology did not end up in the shelves, it entered into partnership with an indigenous Automobile manufacturing firm, Innosson Motors to mass produce the tricycles. With the innovation and agreement in place, no doubt, NASENI is playing its roles in Nigeria to evolve an industrial economy.
In 2011, NASENI established and till date operates a 7.5 Megawatts Solar Panel Manufacturing Company and this is beside its current efforts to increase local content of solar panel manufacturing in Nigeria up to 85% through the local production of solar cells from silica ingots (common sand) which is massively abundant in the country.
The solar cells manufacturing alone will create a minimum of nineteen thousand eight hundred (19,800) local jobs from extraction and processing of silica including aluminum framework production. This venture will lead to conservation of Nigeria’s foreign exchange and reduction of capital flights. NASENI is currently up and running at the efforts of manufacturing the first Made-in-Nigeria Helicopter and also the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for agriculture and security surveillance purposes. The palm oil expeller, coconut oil expeller, primary and secondary schools science equipment and tertiary laboratory equipment are all achievements of the agency.
The Executive Vice Chairman/CE of NASENI, Prof. Mohammed Sani Haruna, while reiterating his mission, said the agency was to create a new NASENI that would be in tune with modern technological advancements saddled with the development of Nigeria’s local content.
He explained “NASENI under my watch has adopted Advanced Manufacturing Technology as a means of catching up with advanced countries of the world” and according to him, the Executive Order 5 by the Federal Government is a policy meant to develop the nation’s local content and engineering capabilities and that order is being followed diligently in conception and implementation of programmes in the Agency.
The present administration having realized that not much of socio-economic goals or economic diversification efforts could pass without deliberate priority investments in science, engineering, technology and innovation development is now beaming its search lights to incorporate NASENI as a tool in the hands of the National Economic Council, an action which underscores President Buhari’s approach to open new vistas for building stronger economic structures that are not dependent on oil and other primary raw materials but on research and development, science, technology, innovation and engineering for the present and future generations of Nigerians like other developed countries. This, of course, is the secret of the Asian Tigers.
Also, statistics show that Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) where most advanced countries of the world belong including Germany, USA, UK, Japan, Korea, China among others have continued to invest more in research and development and therefore the secret behind their economic growth and development.
For instance, the United States, Germany, Israel and Korea have continued to display the highest levels of research and development intensity among OECD countries, at 4.9% and 4.6% of GDP respectively. In the United States, research and development intensity surpassed the 3% milestone for the first time in 2019-2020 while the R&D intensity of China grew from 2.1% to 2.2%. In contrast, the EU27 area experienced a more modest increase to 2.1%. Japan, Germany, Korea and France were the largest R&D performers in the OECD area. In comparative purchasing power terms, China is the world’s second largest R&D player, with total R&D expenditure reaching 80% of that of the United States in 2019, up from 26% in 2005. Growth in R&D investments in the EU 27 area has been on a faster trajectory since 2016 till date mostly driven by Germany.
It was late Sir Jawaharlal Nehru, the First Prime Minister and father of modern India who once affirmed that “it is only science and technology and its application that can solve the problem of hunger, illiteracy and superstition. It is only science and technology that can solve the problem of vast resources lying waste, it will solve the problem of rich country inhabited by starving people. Who indeed could afford to ignore science and technology… at every turn we have to seek its aid, the future belongs to science and technology, I and those who make friends with it” (end of quote). If anyone alluded that Nehru had Nigeria or most African countries in mind when he made the above observation, one would not be wrong considering the abundant of resources in the soil of the 36 states of Nigeria including their work force and yet the rate of poverty and unemployment in the country are currently scary.
However there is hope in the current efforts of the Federal Government via the National Economic Council to build afresh a new Nigeria economy by the adoption of such proven sustainable economic growth and development factors: research & development, science, engineering and technology innovation, just like the developed countries, and by putting NASENI in the driver’s seat working with other critical agencies of government and also private sector involved in the development of innovation, industrial and the knowledge-based sectors of the economy.
Good luck Nigeria as the citizens now look forward to a new Nigeria industrial economy with NASENI in the driver’s seat.
Mr. Olusegun Ayeoyenikan, is the Deputy Director Information, National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, NASENI (Presidency).
