Nigeria LNG science prize discoveries – Part 2

Nigeria LNG Ltd, by virtue of the federal government having shares in the gas company, one would have expected that government would pay greater attention beyond its share of profits, like the outcomes of the yearly science prize. Both the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology have merely slept on duty while Nigerian scientists have been toiling to create products that should make Nigerians live better lives. It’s scandalous that the Ministry of Science and Technology even exists at all while these amazing scientific innovations coming out of universities every year still lie unused, ignored. How the ministry is unable to serve as the needed connector and catalyst between these measurable scientific researches and industries beats the imagination.

Surprisingly, almost all the innovations these scientists have developed are such that are applicable to every day reality but which Nigeria still spends billions of scarce dollars to import.

A cursory look at the innovations will suffice. In 2004, Professor Akpoveta Susu, working with his student, Dr. Kingsley Abhulimen, at the University of Lagos, developed ‘Real-Time Computer Assisted Leak Detection/Location Reporting and Inventory Loss Monitoring System.’ In a country where crude oil pipelines rupture periodically to cause environmental damage and loss of crude oil, one would have expected the NNPC to have raced forward to appropriate and convert this piece of technology into its arsenal and immediately deploy it. But no; NNPC does not seem to work that way. It has slept all through 18 years since that piece of technology was made available as it has done practically nothing to acquire it.

In 2006, Professor Michael Adikwu discovered ‘Wound Healing Devices (Formulations) Containing Snail Mucin.’ This innovation in medicine is still lying fallow, unused. In 2008, Dr. Ebenezer Meshida developed ‘Solution to Road Pavement Destabilisation by the Invention of ‘Lateralite’: A Stabilisation Flux for Fine Grained Lateritic Soils.’ This discovery is intended to make our roads last far longer than they currently do, so save time and money. But the Ministry of Works hardly knows it exists, much less utilise it to pave roads across the country and save precious lives lost daily to bad roads.

Late Professor Andrew Nok in 2009 worked towards the ‘Discovery of the gene responsible for the creation of Sialidase (SD), an enzyme which causes sleeping sickness (Trypanosomiasis).’ This is another medical innovation for sleeping sickness that should have been harvested straightaway. But again, nothing. And in 2010, Professor Akaehomen Ibhadode worked towards the ‘Development of a New Method in Die Design.’ Textile industries should have been happy that a local alternative to the dye they import is readily available and perhaps cheaper. But no; textile industries have since died anyway, because of Nigeria’s incurable appetite for foreign textile prints. So why bother?

In 2017, Ikeoluwapo Ajayi, Ayodele Jegede and Bidemi Yusuf focused on means of ‘Improving Home and Community Management of Malaria: Providing the Evidence Base Multifaceted Efforts at Malaria Control in Research.’ This research dovetails into Mokuolu and Agubata’s work below. These research discoveries should ordinarily be a given for commercial harvest, but Nigeria works in mysterious ways that defy common logic.

In 2018, Olugbenga Mokuolu​ and Chukwuma Agubata produced the ‘Management of Malaria of Various Grades and Mapping Artemisinin Resistance’ and ‘Novel lipid microparticles for effective delivery of Artemether antimalarial drug using a locally-sourced Irvingia fat from nuts of Irvingia gabonensis var excelsa (ogbono).’ These two innovations should have been saving thousands of lives Nigeria loses to malaria, but all the pharmaceutical companies would rather import foreign variants rather than produce locally efficacious ones that these discoveries intend.

Professor Meihong Wang and Dr. Mathew Aneke in 2019 developed ‘Carbon Capture, Carbon Utilization, and Biomass Gasification and Energy Storage for Power Generation.’ For a country suffering acute power challenges, this innovation should have been snatched up immediately. But Nigeria does not work that way, and so the country still struggles with power supply that is at a mere 4,000 megawatts for 200 million population.

A tragic irony indeed. Peter Ngene’s ‘Nanostructured Metal Hydrides for the Storage of Electrical Power from Renewable Energy Sources and for Explosion Prevention in High Voltage Power Transformers’ should also have complemented Wang and Aneke’s work to further strengthen the energy sector mix, but these two innovations are still dormant till date, lying useless in some dusty laboratories.

With the combined forces of bandits and kidnappers and terrorists in parts of the country that have chased farmers from farming and food insecurity looms, the 2022 innovation by Muhydideen Oyekunle and Shehu Ado – ‘Gains in Grain Yield of Released Maize (Zea Mays L.) Cultivars under Drought and Well-Watered Conditions’ should be hailed as innovation that should save the country from certain hunger. The prize was awarded in October 2022.

Those awarded over 10 years ago have yet to get any positive response anyway, so why the hurry about a recent prize result? That same October, Sesan Peter Ayodeji and Emmanuel Olatunji Olatomilola also worked towards the ‘Development of Process Plant for Plantain Flour.’ In a country with her citizens struggling with diabetes and sugar-related diseases, this innovation in plantain flour should be excellent and bankable commercial venture that should excite any industrialist, so the product is made widely available like garri and other flours in industrial scale quantity for export to earn foreign currency. Plantains regularly waste away in the hands of farmers because no innovative way has been found to utilise them in industrial scale size as this scientific work indicates

Why and how Nigeria LNG should intervene
Clearly, these innovative ideas that the science prize has thrown up over the years are crying out to be commercialised with the right industrial set up. In other words, which industry will undertake to put these ideas through the refinement process in a manufacturing concern for their envisaged outputs to get to the marketplace for the wealth-creation gem inherent in them? This is the question that stares everyone in the face. Interestingly, these innovations are not limited to the winners of Nigeria LNG-sponsored science prize alone. Across tertiary institutions across the country, scientists and researchers are producing innovations that should drive Nigeria’s quest for rapid industrialisation, because these are domestic ideas that do no need any foreign input.

Recently at Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, researchers innovated a solar-powered tricycle waiting for funding and ultimate commercialisation. At the University of Benin, Benin City, researchers also innovated a mini truck for evacuating farm produce and other light-weight haulage. At the University of Maiduguri, a mini bus powered by solar was unveiled a year ago or so. At the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, a mechanism for the conversion of waste materials to electricity has long been perfected, so also at Obafemi Awolowo University with similar invention. Indeed strewn across Nigeria’s universities that government has utterly neglected, mindboggling innovations are taking place. There’s hardly any university without one innovative idea or the other to show as their research efforts, even from students’ theses or final year projects. Yet these research outcomes merely remain academic exercises that do leave the four walls of these institutions where they are perfected.

To be continued tomorrow

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