Nigeria moving towards knowledge, innovation based economy - Onu

The Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu has stated that Nigeria is moving away from resource based economy to one driven by knowledge and innovations.

Onu who stated this when he received the Israeli Depu­ty Chief of Mission to Nige­ria, Nadan Goren on Mon­day in Abuja, said given the long and warm relationship that have existed between Nigeria and Israel, the fed­eral government is willing to cooperate with Israel in sev­eral areas.

According to him, “Our nation is in the process of moving away from a re­source based economy to a knowledge based economy that is innovation drive. That we should be in a position at the Federal Ministry of Sci­ence and Technology to as­sist our country achieve that.

“And in doing so we will be in a position to now ef­ficiently utilize all the enor­mous resource available to the country. We can no lon­ger continue to depend on importation of the things that we need including even the things that we eat”.

He said the present admin­istration is convinced that in “a knowledge economy which we are working towards, we will be in a position to add value to the enormous re­sources that nature has be­stowed Nigeria with”.

Onu said the ministry is working hard to assist the country to achieve this, stressing that “when we do so we will be in a position to create a lot of jobs because through research and innova­tions in the process of com­mercialization of our research findings will give rise to small and medium scale industries which over time can grow into multi-nationals”.

The Minister said Nigeria will be very happy to work with Israel in the process of transforming the country.

Earlier, Goren said tech­nology is part of Israeli cul­ture as it has helped it sur­mount challenges that have threatened its existence, includ­ing security and agriculture.

“When I think of technology it connects with culture because Israel since its inception has to deal with hardship. Whether it be agricultural hardship, hav­ing arid land which did not have enough water to supply agriculture or security hard­ship.

“Everyone knows that we have been plagued by secu­rity threats on our existence since our inception. And how did manage both of these hardships or challenges? It is by technology and innova­tions”.

Goren stressed that the key to Israelis success is in turn­ing challenges into opportu­nity, a knowledge, he noted, his country I willing to share with Nigeria.