The world over, Research and Development remains the bedrock of growth and innovation, not just in the oil and gas industry, but across all sectors. But in Nigeria, R&D has always taken the back burner, getting little attention and resources. Emmanuel Addeh takes a look at the challenges and efforts by Nigeria to tackle these problems, given the new drive to ensure local content in the oil and gas sector.
Added to that is the inability to retain most of the best brains in-country and inability to employ or re-integrate those sponsored by government on scholarships to apply knowledge acquired. Even where it exists, there is some sort of discrimination against local researchers compared to expatriates, poor linkages between R&D departments and industry that are meant to promote the advancement of the frontiers of human knowledge.
An analysis of global practices of R&D will quickly reveal that Nigeria has either not started or is still lagging behind. For instance, the combined R&D spend of just five countries makes up 63.5 per cent of the entire global R&D expenditure. In addition, there has been a certain amount of research carried out on improved drilling methods and along basic geological lines, seismic methods of determining underground structure, seismic surveying, which has come with great improvement in the accuracy and reliability of the instruments used and in the method itself. All these have been dependent on innovation.
The government noted that the 0.2 per cent currently devoted to Research and Development in the country remains very negligible, noting that developed nations like the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and South Korea spend between 2.5 to 4 per cent of their annual GDP on research. Represented by the Permanent Secretary at the ministry, Dr. Nasir Gwarzo, Sylva argued that the situation remains unsustainable if the country is serious about building a national technological capability that will drive economic growth.
“Still on funding and in line with our commitment to provide leadership, I am pleased to officially announce the creation of the Nigerian Content Research and Development Fund with an initial seed capital of $50 million,” he announced. According to him, with the Petroleum Industry Act , a governance framework for the industry with clear delineation of roles between regulation and profit-centric business units has now been established.
“Africa, on the other hand, accounted for less than 1 percent of the global R&D spend while its GDP is only 3 per cent of the global GDP. You will agree with me that there is a nexus between the spend on research and development and economic prosperity,” he argued.
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