The Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny Echono, has earlier assured of the Fund’s commitment to boost research and innovations in Nigeria’s tertiary education, and he is not deviating from it.

In fact, his recent tour and inspection of Innov8Hub for the TETFund Alliance for Innovative Research (TETFAIR) Prototype Development Bootcamp along Airport Road, Abuja, Echono, who led a delegation of TETFund officials reiterated the resolve to boos human capital development beyond the academia to ensure that the country compete favourably among other nations of the world.

The ES was no doubt excited at the development at the hub and he believed that in no distant time, academic research from Nigerians would be commercialised for the benefit of all citizens.

TETFAIR is a collaboration with Innov8 Hub for the purpose of establishing Agricultural Research and Innovation Fellowship for Africa (ARIFA) in the country. The objective was to raise a skilled workforce that would re-engineer the continent’s agricultural food sector in the next one decade.

Echono had said that the Fund’s intervention in ARIFA will impact on faculties and departments across the nation’s tertiary institutions and will see to the delivery of science-led solutions towards improved livelihoods as well as sustain and advance academic excellence.

At the Hub, aspiring inventors, researchers and academics are equipped with necessary skills to navigate through the country’s innovation and invention ecosystems.

He expressed satisfaction over the progress made so far at the hub and pledged TETFund’s commitment to sustain the partnership. According to him, “This is an opportunity we have to make a difference in the lives of our people, and to transform our country from potential to reality in terms of what we can do about the economy; how we can grow it and how we can share the benefits.
He added that: “Of all the gifts God has given to mankind; it is the intellect that will make the most impact; hence the need to invest in researchers.

A lot of what is happening in this hub is agriculture and Nigeria has a comparative advantage in agriculture. With dedication, commitment and the right policies, we can be able to move into that agricultural space to help our people. At the Fund, we are doing a lot of intervention in the innovation space this year,” he said.

On the commercialisation of research output, he stated without doubt, that it will provide new revenue generation and job creation opportunities to any country.

“Taking innovations to market through commercialisation, will no doubt, provide economic benefits to any country.
“Research commercialisation also provides new products and services that can be used to solve some of life’s most pressing problems, make incremental improvements in the quality of life of consumers as well as create business effectiveness across a wide variety of domains.”

The ES frowned that in spite of its relevance to national development, the country has failed in the past to commercialise research by turning its products into tangible developmental outcomes for socio-economic growth of the country.
Consequently, Echono brought in this partnership that will help researchers and academics in public universities across the country to help them translate ideas into innovation.

The good news, however, is that Echono has expressed the need to replicate the hub in the nation’s public universities. “It was not as if Innova8 was the only hub the country has but there are few owned by some private individuals. The only challenge they have is the lack of a conveyor belt that is rooted in the body of knowledge, of experience and of practice that fit those hubs unlike in this circumstance where there are experts coming to help and exchange knowledge and teach our people.

“The second aspect is that up till now, we have been focusing on our universities but the good news is that we are also bringing it to our polytechnics and colleges of education so that gradually, we will create skills”, he stated.

This cheering news was greeted with excitement and applause as people felt that TETFund is coming out fully under Echono to execute its mandate of making glaring impacts in government owned tertiary institutions.

While it is of note that the government alone cannot fund education, at least, an appreciable impact as the nation is beginning to feel under Echono will definitely bridge the infrastructural and other deficit gaps that have existed over time.