General News
MR Ife Adebayo, the Special Adviser to the Vice-President on Entrepreneurship and Innovation has challenged Nigerian Universities on innovation, saying that they need to conduct more researches to solve societal problems..
Adebayo said this at a workshop organised by AUSTinspire Business Incubation Center for Government, Industry and the University community in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the objective of the workshop was to create and foster a culture of innovation from the research being undertaken at AUST.
Adebayo said the academia must think on innovation, adding that the universities must think more on how to proffer solutions to problems bedeviling the people as a nation.
He said there was a need for a symbiotic relationship between the government and others who were to bring about innovation, adding, “we can’t have two parallel lines”, hence it would be an exercise in futility.
“Over the years, what the government has been doing is to find a middle way to achieve innovation, we look at states where a lot of innovation has been going on such as Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna and Ekiti and Anambra.”
Adebayo said that the government’s effort was to support the innovation ecosystem, urging that the government must be in the way to provide policies and the enabling environment for innovations to thrive.
The Aide said the Federal Government would always support innovation through institutions in the country, adding that the academia must position itself not just as academic but as solution based.
According to him, ”they must provide solutions to problems bedeviling their immediate environment. How much innovation policies have been driven by academia.
” They must think on this, our universities must think more on how to proffer solutions to problems bedeviling us as a nation.
” Our hope is that our innovation plans will get the requisite leverage from our universities.”
Prof. Peter Onwualu, the Vice-Chancellor, African University of Science and Technology, Abuja, said the school was transiting to innovation space.
He added, ”we cannot not do it alone, hence we have been looking for support in entrepreneurship programmes.”
Onwualu said the school had been able to get grants from some banks, adding that the university can now produce graduates that were industry-ready and contribute to African development.
“African Development Bank (ADB) is supporting this quest. We are starting the innovation hub. We are starting the process of interaction among academia, industries and business,” the V-C said.
He said the country was confronted with many issues such as infrastructure deficit, epileptic power supply among others, adding, ”this was why the school embarked on the innovation drive.
“We are confronted by challenges which have solutions in research and innovation. We must move away from pure academic research to innovation,” Onwualu said.
Mr Feranmi Adejuwon, the Practice Lead for HCI Innovation, said the Government-Industry-Academia dialogue was a workshop and dialogue designed to set the pace for the collaboration.
He said the programme was a critical engagement strategy for AUSTinspire, adding that the outcome would guide the framework for collaboration among the University, Government, and industry at AUSTinspire.
Adejuwone said the objective was to foster an environment that would support economic and social development by bringing industry and academia together, thereby leading to industry led research.(NAN)
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Tags: Feranmi Adejuwon Ife Adebayo Prof. Peter Onwualu
