President Bola Tinubu has noted that the availability of high-quality, standardized products manufactured within Nigeria would compel Nigerian consumers to select domestically-produced goods and services exclusively.
The President said that his administration’s primary objective is to enhance the quality of products manufactured domestically, emphasizing that “upon optimization of Nigerian-manufactured products, domestic consumption will naturally follow.”
Tinubu further emphasized that the innovative capabilities of Nigerians must be leveraged to generate substantial economic value for the nation, underscoring his government’s commitment to establishing an economy characterized by quality employment opportunities, robust global industrial competitiveness, expanded export capabilities, and enhanced citizen welfare.
The President, represented by the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, SAN, made this known when he addressed a group of innovators at Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday. He insisted that science, technology, and innovation are essential to achieving the national ambition.
He said his government is equipping the young people with knowledge and tools to compete in the industries of today and share those of the future, adding his responsibility is to turn and release the modern talent and resources into domestic industrial production strength.
“This condition, of course, underpins our industrial policy and wider effort to strengthen our infrastructure, attract investment, and develop skills, and expand opportunities for enterprise. These efforts must certainly have to work together,” the President said.
“Research must respond to industrial needs, innovation must reach market, investment must build productive capacity and growth must create opportunities across our federation. That is actually the connection between innovation and the renewed hopes agenda, ideas translated into enterprise, enterprises translated into jobs and jobs translated into better lives for our citizens.
“today, we celebrate solutions across various sectors of our economy, especially those that matter directly to our people: agriculture, manufacturing, renewable energy, healthcare, education, and digital economy. The value of these solutions that have been identified within this innovateNaija platform will ultimately be measured in practical terms, and these are some of the practical questions that will emit.
“First, can they help in farmers reduce losses? Can they make a small business more productive? Can they improve access to affordable energy or healthcare? Can they reduce the cost of production, strengthen local supply chains, and create employment for our teenagers? These are the outcomes that give innovation its national significance.”
He added, “Like Nigerian cables, you don’t beg builders to use Nigerian cables because it’s top notch. The other things that are made in Nigeria because of the quality Nigerians patronize without even sense of patriotism. They just patronize because of the high quality, and that’s part of what we are doing at the moment across the various MDS.”
Also speaking at the event, the Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer
National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, NASENI, Khalil Suleiman Halilu, said that Nigeria must move from consumption to creation.
“We must become a nation that does not simply import solutions, but creates them. That does not simply consume technology, but develops it, that does not simply export potential, but converts that potential into products, companies, industries and jobs.”
He maintained that no serious innovation ecosystem is built by government alone, industry alone, or innovators alone, adding that an idea that remains permanently on a shelf cannot transform an economy.
