The Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS) on Monday urged the Federal Government to make more investments in the area of Research and Development (R&D).
The Executive Secretary of NAS, Dr Oladoyin Odubanjo made the call in an interview in Abuja.
He said that while Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) had been integrated into all sectors of the economy, the allocation of resources to the sector remained inadequate.
“We are devoting relatively small amount to research and development; we lack enough motivation to carry out researches.
“The budgets of many of our research institutes have a lot of overhead provisions with virtually zero funds made available for research,” he said.
He said that insecurity in the country had worsened already poor funding situation as with more resources now made available to fight terrorism and banditry at the expensive of research and development.
“If we had a peaceful environment, a significant portion of our defense budget could be redirected towards critical areas of national development.
“We are dealing with insufficient funds for R&D and unfortunately found ourselves in a situation where a lot of resources are going into security, ” he said.
According to him, once there are security concerns, development is relegated to the background.
“Assuming we have peace and we have no problem whatsoever, it means that a good chunk of our resources can be invested in education, health, agriculture, R&D,” Odubanjo said.
He said Nigeria’s progress in STI would be dependent on two major factors which he said were political will and security.
The Executive Secretary decried the mass exodus of skilled professionals, scientists, researchers and medical experts to other countries.
He cautioned that the continued loss of human capital would have long-term consequences for the country’s development.
“A lot of Nigerian experts are being exported at the moment in the medical and every other sector.
“We are losing our greatest resource, our skilled manpower, and if insecurity persists, more experts will exit leaving us without the necessary personnel to drive scientific and technological progress,” he said.
NAN
