Continued from yesterday

Of course, stories abound of young talents, some of them secondary dropouts, who have invented aeroplanes that could actually fly and other rudimentary but amazing technological inventions capable of being refined and turned into industrial goldmines.

Some of these innovations are regularly aired by the National Television Authority (NTA). Yet they continue to elude the gaze of the Ministry of Science and Technology which ought to harvest these ideas, fund them with a view to forming an industrial base for warehousing them for onward commercialisation. Nigerian industrialists have become scarce and are slow to invest because of poor power supply and massive imports that discourage local production.

Therefore, given Nigerian government’s lacklustre antecedents in pushing for the country’s development, ‘individuals’ will have to bell the cat.

And one such individual is a corporate entity called Nigeria LNG, given its track record. Although other individual corporate citizens have continued to fail due to poor regulatory and other instruments of protection of local going concerns, Nigeria LNG has weathered the storm of Nigeria’s turbulent economic system to emerge the best performing company, largely because of the foreign input to its management team that would insist on global standards of operation.

With the involvement of the international oil companies, Nigeria LNG has operated like other global business concerns, and therefore shielded from the vagaries that often plague many local concerns with government’s interests such as corruption and nepotistic tendencies that privilege incompetence over competence. In other words, Nigeria LNG has proven itself a model corporate entity worthy of emulation by anyone seeking to set up business.

And so from Prof. Wang and Dr. Aneke’s ‘Carbon Capture, Carbon Utilization, and Biomass Gasification and Energy Storage for Power Generation’ to Ngene’s ‘Nanostructured Metal Hydrides for the Storage of Electrical Power from Renewable Energy Sources and for Explosion Prevention in High Voltage Power Transformers,’ and, of course, the other innovative ideas, Nigeria’s industrial revolution is in abeyance not because there are no innovative brains, but simply because Nigeria and Nigerians have failed themselves in rising up to the task of converting the numerous innovative ideas into profitable commercial and industrial ventures.

It is the considered view of this writer that Nigeria LNG Ltd will also have to extend its hand of fellowship beyond its core gas mandate yet again. The idea is for Nigeria LNG Ltd to set up a corporate concern that will harness and harvest these scientific research outcomes of the science prize and other scientific innovations and translate them into commercial ventures.

It has a model already in place in Bonny Island, its home, that it can readily tap into: a venture business concern that is answerable to Nigeria LNG Ltd in its operations which will harvest these innovative products and convert them into commercialized products for profits.

The point cannot but bear being repeated that this writer is well aware that Nigeria LNG is a gas company and not the usual venture capital corporation. So ordinarily, this appeal to extend its brand portfolio to non-gas concern would be considered outlandish.

But Nigeria is in an extraordinary place right now, and Nigeria LNG seems to have a hang of how to run billion dollar corporation, with the best international management standards.

The suggestion is for Nigeria LNG to set up a subsidiary that can harvest these scientific discoveries arising from its science prize and so many others wasting away in tertiary institutions and convert them to usable, commercial products. By so doing, Nigeria LNG would have expanded its CSR on massive employment for Nigeria’s teeming youth who are busy leaving the country in droves in the feverish ‘japa’ syndrome. Also, this project needs the kind of big money that only Nigeria LNG can muster.

Ordinarily, one would have expected over-hyped business people like Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Jim Ovia, Tony Elumelu, Omolade Okoya Thomas, Dantata, Ade Ojo, Cosmas Maduka, and other Nigeria big but pretend business moguls to look in the direction of Nigeria’s scientific inventions and innovations to cash out, so to say.

But sadly, no. They don’t happen to think in that direction. Importation is what’s in their combined DNA, a virus that jointly links them with policymakers in government who prefer their 15 or more per cent kickbacks from importations and the ruination of the Nigerian economy and impoverishment of the population, sadistic individuals who happily supervise the outflow of Nigerian youths to slaver labour abroad.

This is the sorry state Nigeria now finds herself. Where then should the source of light come from, since these men have failed to emulate their counterparts in ancient Europe who made the inventions of the scientists commercial products that they now happily import to the Nigerian market and thereby kill its industrial, productive sector?

For Nigeria, this is the possibility of a second chance. Unless its scientific innovations are harvested and fast too, all the youthful population that gives the country strength will soon empty out to bolster the productive segments of other societies.

And just like Nigeria’s dumb leaders who go for medical check-ups abroad and meet Nigerian doctors they drove out attending to them, so too will all manufactured goods imported into the country have the imprints of our young people that were driven away because those who manage the country failed to use their brains to think the country out of the hole they dug and buried Nigeria in.

That’s what makes appealing to these bat-blind individuals who run and ruin the country’s misdirected government and our so-called business moguls to help a misplaced a priority. Only a forward-looking organisation like Nigeria LNG has what it takes.

This is by virtue of the fact that it established the innovative literature and science prizes that have proven to be the elixir the country needs. And which innovations need to be carried forward to the finishing line – commercialisation and industrialisation of all pieces of scientific innovations that can be found anywhere in the country, from the science prize outcomes and others emerging from the tertiary institutions!
Of course, this is a huge charge by every stretch of the imagination.

But it’s a charge the gas company is well positioned to discharge creditably going by its antecedents. The dream is that it heeds this important patriotic call!
Concluded

Ajeluorou, journalist and writer, is the author of Igho Goes to Farm, Libations for Africa and Brides of the Infidels.