Nigeria is currently preoccupied with insecurity issues, banditry, herdsmen, restructuring, separatist agitators, youth unemployment, work stoppages, and economic challenges, to name just a few. As serious as these challenges may appear, we believe they are not capable of sinking Nigeria because they are challenges that could be solved if the right actions were taken. What…
beginning 61 years ago when it gained independence and its population was only about 70 million. And what has brought Nigeria’s sorry state of R&I to a sharp focus is the Covid-19 pandemic. While countries like the United States, China, Japan, Israel, Madagascar, and Cuba were frantically researching to find cures and vaccines, Nigeria’s universities – that should be the hub of research activities – were closed because of a work stoppage by the Academic Staff Union of Universities .
This is a most damning charge that should serve as a rude awakening. Tomori, a noted virologist, and immediate past Vice-Chancellor of Redeemer’s University, Ogun State, is obviously in a vantage position to dissect the problems of the scientific fraternity. Nigerian scientists’ failing was palpable in the Pfizer polio vaccine clinical trials in Kano State, in 1996, which resulted in the death of children.
However, as grim as the picture seems, the universalism of science affords Nigerian scientists engaged in serious research opportunity to secure grants and facilities internationally. Such first-rate brains are still at home and even more among Nigerians in the Diaspora. For those at home, a rethink of strategy has become imperative.
While these barriers are real, WARIMA appears to place the blame entirely on outside influences, most notably the governments in the region and funding agencies, while absolving the researchers themselves and research institutions of any responsibilities. The newspaper editorial, on the other hand, spreads the blame among the regional governments, research scientists, and universities. Government officials blame research scientists and universities.
However, just like we study, reference or adopt the theories, methods, or techniques of pioneers and pacesetters with remarkable research and knowledge breakthroughs that have changed our world in science, social sciences, arts, and humanities, Dr. Adadevoh, and her small team is a tangible, influential, relatable practical centralized model or example of innovative collaborative research breakthrough worth studying and emulating in our context.
Can they afford creative resources, intuition, empathy, and painstaking thoroughness to sustain and accomplish the types of research that provide solutions to problems? Do they have a conducive environment for collaborative research and the capacity to channel their individual research achievements through the full range of expertise needed to get to the point of impactful research uptake?
For example, when TETFund provides research grants to the tertiary institutions, how well do the researchers manage their research projects, in terms of team work, quality research, regular progress reports, and high quality final technical and financial reports? How many of the qualifying federal and state institutions are even taking advantage of this little resource provided by TETFund?
The cost benefit of contracting outside agencies for international funding opportunities is not clear. Also unclear are definitive initiatives for identifying research strengths, especially those that would place the universities in the map of global ranking and prestige.5,6 and have helped to ease African plight, particularly, in the areas of health, agriculture/food safety and environment/climate change. Researchers can tap international goodwill and funding resources to improve their research capacities. Agencies like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, EU’s Horizon Europe , U.K.’s Department of International Development, the Ford Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust are potential sources of funding.
In the hierarchy of providing remedy, creating and/or improving existing institutional research structure comes first. Creating a functional research structure should be the direct responsibility of the institution, and should come at very little expenditure. The structure at the University of Ibadan stands out.
There's no problem without a solution,are u suffering from Diabetes or you know someone who is suffering from Diabetes?There's good news for them today,with my powerful Herbal mixture,I can cure Diabetes in less than two weeks,that weakness,weak erection nd half blindness will go