Favour Amarachi

Director General, National Board for Technology Incubation, Dr, Mrs Patricia Uchenna Chukwu has called on all Research institutions in Nigeria to work with NBTI in the area of commercialization of their Research and Development results.

Dr. Patricia made the call in Abuja at a One-Day sensitization workshop on ‘provision of logistics support for technology sourcing & joint research commercialization effort with academia and industry, to promote Research and Development (R&D) in Nigeria.

She noted that a lot of agencies of government have overlapping functions, saying that there is need for academia, researchers and Industrialist to be enlightened to know what they are expected to do.

According to her, “the Mandate of NBTI is to commercialize R&D results. If another Agency is coming to tell you that this is their Mandate, that they can research and at the same time commercialize, is like someone manufacturing and at the same time doing the retailer job.

“you cannot do both, is something we are trying to do in order to enlighten both the Academia, the researcher, Industries and the government to know were there functions starts and were it ends.

“NBTI without working together with all research Institutions cannot be able to identify those Research and Development results meant to be commercialized, she said”.

The Director General further said federal government had come up with the initiative of incubating technologists for commercialization within and outside the country, hence the creation of National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI) several years ago.

“I am particularly excited about this initiative because our technology sourcing has been long over-due for logistics support. No matter how good a policy of the government is, it may never make the desired impact if the needed support is not accorded it in every area to actualize it.

“I believe that this kind of support will enable us to identify potential value chains in the overall process of our productive engagements technologically. This is the only way that our quest for innovation and productivity can be realized.

This event, she said, underscores the desire of the government to bring about massive development through the promotion of Research and Development.

“Skill Acquisition and Small Scale Enterprises Development, is clearly one of the Strategies to further engender the benefit of Science and Technology in our dear country.