BLACK #STORIES::::Nigerian economy yet to harness creativity, innovation - Frank Nweke jr.

   
 “No country including Nigeria can develop by accident. If you don’t fund your educational system, Infrastructural and human structure you cannot expect to make progress.
    “All of these things are as a result of conscious effort to move forward, to progress as a people and as a society or community.”


A former Director-General of Nigeria Economic Summit Group, Mr. Frank Nweke jr, has stated that although Nigeria ranks as the 26th largest economy in the world, it had yet to harness the potentials for creativity and innovation of its people.

He however challenged the Federal Government to invest huge resources in the country’s education sector and reiterated the need for government to develop strong political will at all levels because “public policy does not and cannot operate in a vacuum.”

Nweke, also a former Minister of Information and Communications, threw the challenge in Abuja while delivering a keynote address entitled: ‘Creativity and Innovation-key to African Renaissance’, during the 7th annual lecture of a non-profit organization, Lifeline Care Association, which was jointly organized by the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion.

He said, “The potentials of creativity and innovation have not been harnessed by Nigeria as we currently speak. It is true and extremely laudable that Nigeria now ranks 26th largest economy in the world and largest in Africa with about $510 billion in nominal Gross Domestic Product. There is however a very big difference between being the 26th largest economy in the world and being one of the richest countries in the world.

“The difference here is with per capita income which characterizes a nation into one of three categories- factor driven economy, efficiency driven economy or an innovation driven economy. No country including Nigeria can develop by accident. If you don’t fund your educational system, Infrastructural and human structure you cannot expect to make progress.

“For Nigeria to really make that quantum progress, we need to invest more in our educational system, our educational institutions, research institutions, to encourage our academics, our talented people within our country to actually embrace research. And to support them financial and with policies. All of these things are as a result of conscious effort to move forward, to progress as a people and as a society or community.”

In an interview with journalists, the Director-General of NOTAP, Dr. Umar Bindir, said that for the nation to overcome its challenges, the government must encourage creativity and innovation.

“We must transform our education system from the bottom at the primary level up to the university level, we must transform to also become people who are producing science that matter, knowledge about our own system. We must transform to ensure that our science and knowledge can transform into our solutions so that we overcome our power, health, food security and other problems,” he stressed.

    “No country including Nigeria can develop by accident. If you don’t fund your educational system, Infrastructural and human structure you cannot expect to make progress.
    “All of these things are as a result of conscious effort to move forward, to progress as a people and as a society or community.”

     He noted: “The MHA institute in California defines creativity as the ability to think and act in ways that are new and novel. It further divides creativity into innovation and invention. While innovation is the act of thinking creatively about something that already exists (example the tape recorder, walkman, and CD player are all innovations on the phonograph), invention is creating something that did not exist before (example the phonograph).”

     Noting that the future well-being and development of any country rests on its ability to innovate, Nweke stressed how innovation remains the key to growth and progress
     “It therefore goes without saying that creativity and innovation affect every sphere of human endeavour,” he stressed.

    He added: “A long slow sequence of creativity from the Stone Age till now has made possible the familiar details of our everyday lives. Mankind’s programme of improvements has been erratic and unpredictable, but good ideas are rarely forgotten. They are borrowed and copied and spread more widely, in an accelerating process, which makes the luxuries of one age the necessities of the next.

   “Two million years of stone technology represent the first long era of discovery at the start of human history. The use of fire, more than 500,000 years ago, is also a discovery. And some Stone Age artifacts (such as winged arrow-heads to stick in the flesh of the prey, or hooks carved in bone) have almost the quality of inventions. But these are developments of such an extended nature that they seem different in kind from the discoveries and inventions of more recent history.

    “Perhaps the first two ideas worthy of the name of ‘invention’, even though invented many times in many different places, are the eye of a needle and the string of a bow about 15,000 years ago. By the middle ages, creativity had brought about such inventions as the windmill, gunpowder, the compass, spectacles (which is known today as reading/sight glasses), artillery for warfare, hand guns.
  
  “Several other people through creativity have contributed to the world as we know it today. Some of these people include Albert Einstein whose great theories in the field of Physics set the scene for a lot of modern day inventions and innovations (The establishment of the Manhattan project in the United States of America is much to his credit i.e. research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II); Marie Curie whose pioneering research on radioactivity remain the foundations for treating neoplasms and cancers up till now.

Furthermore, she founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centers of medical research today. Michael Faraday is yet another person who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include those of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology.

     “It therefore goes without saying that creativity is the driving force that has shaped man’s existence from the agrarian age to the industrial age and indeed the current information age that we now find ourselves.”