The Director of NitHub and a Senior Lecturer at the Computer Science Department of the University of Lagos, Dr Victor Odumuyiwa, has said that most of the innovations being developed in Nigeria are limited to two major cities, Lagos and Abuja.
Odumuyiwa stated this on Saturday during the FSI Innovation Showcase Contest held at the University of Lagos. According to him, while stakeholders in Nigeria’s ICT have been doing a lot in organizing forums and innovation contests, the impacts are still limited to the major cities.
The University lecturer said the only way Nigeria can solve its numerous problems is to encourage young Nigerians across the country to innovate. He noted that many Nigerians outside the major cities are being excluded from the major innovative developments happening in the country.
The need to do more
Emphasizing the need for stakeholders to extend innovative programs beyond the major cities, Odumuyiwa said:
- “If we want to solve Nigeria’s problems, we have to keep encouraging the young ones to innovate. We have started doing a lot, having different forums, but it is not enough because we are talking about a nation of 200 million people.
- “Everything we have been doing is only felt in Lagos and Abuja, just two cities in Nigeria. What about going to the hinterland? In the North, we have a lot of young people who are not even in school at all, let alone talk about innovation. They are yet to enjoy an education that will help them to innovate, so we need to do more.”
UNILAG’s commitment to innovation
Highlighting some of the initiatives of the institution, Odumuyiwa said that the goal of the University of Lagos is to be an innovation hub, hence, it has created different platforms on campus to support innovation.
- “We also have an innovation office that manages IP registration. We have an ecosystem created around innovation to foster talent upskilling, to foster product development and incubation of solutions. This aligns with what FSI is doing. FSI is trying to bring out good products and support them to grow. This can encourage not only students but external people to create solutions that can solve our problems as a nation,” he said.
Based on these initiatives, Odumuyiwa said many of the students in the school are now beginning to understand why they should create solutions and not just come to school to get good grades, get a degree and start looking for a job.
While noting that everything in the world is now going digital, he said the Nigerian government would need to create an environment that can help local industries grow more digital technologies and stop importing technologies.
