Nigerian academics: Waiting to be challenged on national dev

It was reported sometime in 2012 that the largest solar power generating station had been built and commissioned in Spain. According to the report, it was big enough to meet the electricity needs of hundreds of thousands of families. To my mind, that was a direct reproach to those of us who live practically on the Equator, for why is it that we would not be the ones meeting our energy needs primarily through solar power? For long, one kept hearing the excuse that solar power was expensive; therefore we continued importing generators and causing those who produce them to feed fat on our own sweat – and damaging our lungs in the process.
The reality, however, is that no government has so far directly challenged our academics and researchers to solve this and other problems confronting us as a nation. If solar power was expensive, did it occur to our leaders to ask – almost compel! – our researchers to find us more affordable ways of generating it? One keeps dreaming of the time when a President would say to the universities: “Here is the money needed to equip your laboratories and conduct your research; in the next three years, I want a solution to such and such a national problem.” I believe that Nigerian academics are waiting for such a challenge.
This is not such a far-fetched idea. Indeed, in countries where research, namely education, is seen, rightly, as the crucial wheels on which progress and advancement roll, it is a common and regular practice. President Barack Obama gives some examples in his book, The Audacity of Hope (New York: Three Rivers Press, p.167) in which he described the American response to the threat of the Soviet Union’s technological advancement at the height of the Cold War in these terms:
In response, President Eisenhower doubled federal aid to education and provided an entire generation of scientists and engineers the training they needed to lead revolutionary advances. That same year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, was formed, providing billions of dollars to basic research that would eventually help create the Internet, bar codes, and computer-aided design. And in 1961, President Kennedy would launch the Apollo space program(me), further inspiring young people across the country to enter the New Frontier of science.
It is amazing how so unaware some of our leaders are of the capacities and skills available in our higher educational institutions. The nation had invested much in the training of its nationals, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, and several of those people are still in the system, many of them refusing to join the brain drain wagon because of their commitment to their own country’s development. At the launching of the Roadmap on Education document in Abuja in March 2009, it became necessary to correct the perception of the Minister of Education who was putting so much emphasis on inviting Nigerian academics in the Diaspora to assist the nation in resuscitating the education sector.
There are skills and incredible competencies in Nigerian universities. The irony about it is that such competent academics are recognised abroad, but hardly at home. Home-based Nigerian academics are winning highly competitive awards, are being invited as external examiners to Western universities because they are recognised as leading authorities in their fields of specialisation, and generally contributing to the advancement of knowledge in a wide array of disciplines. When will the nation allow them to apply their skills to developing the nation? There is no doubt that those in the Diaspora have their part to play as well; but many of those who stayed behind have worked hard to remain current, seeking and winning grants allowing them to spend time in the libraries and laboratories of the world’s leading universities, something which their own country failed to provide, unfortunately.
It is clear, for example, that we have not started designing appropriately for our own physical conditions, like the heavy rainfalls prevalent in our part of the world. Our civil and materials engineers should be challenged to help us design the kind of roads and develop materials which will be more resistant to rain. How about roads which would have slightly convex surfaces, so that the rain would run off the edges into gutters? Also, what of some kind of wood product (wood chips or saw dust bound with glue or some plastic derivative) which could be used for park benches, facing boards or as the external part of doors and windows? There is so much potential for development! In fact, if a challenge were issued today to our universities, we might well discover that most of the fundamental researches have already been conducted and filed away, waiting to be used.
And it is not in the science and technology disciplines alone that academics should be challenged to find solutions to national problems; the humanities and social sciences disciplines equally have a part to play. What, for example, would be the best way to bring about attitudinal change among Nigerians? This is something that could only be determined after extensive research. For instance, on what premise was the re-branding project of the late Professor Dora Akunyili based? Where has such a project been carried out before and what was the result? Nigeria should not continue to conduct its business without taking full advantage of the considerable intellectual resources available in the land.