By Anote Ajeluorou
A social media post announcing its roadshow itinerary indicated that The Nigeria Prize for Science, sponsored by gas company, NLNG, means business beyond the ordinary. If the prophet fails to go to the mountain, as the saying goes, the mountain is ready to visit the prophet for society’s needed spiritual and other wellbeing.
And a Facebook post on the wall of The Nigeria Prize for Literature on Friday, December 12, 2025 sums up the urgency of the task at hand: catch them young and at the incubation period and turf.
Images from University of Abuja in the second day of the roadshow told the story of the need for serious scientific enquiry the sort that should lift the country from its current economic morass and huge import-dependence.
The Advisory Board for Science and NLNG management team told eloquent story about the shift in focus: take the quest for research innovation and innovators to the very grounds where it matters!
“Day 2 of The Nigeria Prize for Science Roadshow at the University of Abuja was filled with impactful conversations about The Nigeria Prizes. Present were the Acting Vice-Chancellor (represented), Chairman, Advisory Board for The Nigeria Prize for Science), Professor Barth Nnaji, the General Manager, External Relations, NLNG), Dr. Sophia Horsfall and Manager, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, NLNG, Anne-Marie Palmer-Ikuku, Advisor, Media Relations and Publicity, External Division, NLNG, Elkanah Chawai, alongside faculty staff and students of the university.
“Professor Barth Nnaji said that Nigeria urgently needs scientific breakthroughs for its sustainability—ideas that spark transformation and research that directly improves lives.
Dr. Sophia Horsfall added that more hands and passionate minds are needed in the science and technology space, noting that the prize celebrates research that goes beyond theory to solve real problems and benefit humanity.
Closing the event, Anne-Marie Palmer-Ikuku highlighted that Nigeria is rich with potential and powered by people who believe in the promise of innovation, urging potential applicants that ‘the time for transformational ideas is now.’”
Among the triple reward offerings in the stable of The Nigeria Prizes – The Nigeria Prize for Literature, The Nigeria Prize for Science and The Nigeria Prize for Literary Criticism now replaced with The Nigerian Prize for Creative Arts (Documentary Film) – The Nigeria Prize for Science has suffered more hiccups than that of literature. With just nine winners, the science prize vastly trails the Literature prize with its 20 winners by a wide margin. With science as the economic main stay of modern societies, this should be a worrisome situation for academics, policymakers and governments at all levels. The failure of science or its lack of application also has huge implication for literature development, particularly its patronage. A well developed scientific society means more jobs for the populace which in turn has enough disposable income to patronise literature. Society is so intricately interlinked that a malaise in one aspect necessarily affects all others. Science and literature are therefore two kolanuts in the same pod; the disease that afflicts one also hinders the blooming of the other. When you ask, why is literature not being patronised as it should? Look to the health of science in society. Nigeria paints a bleak scientific prospect.
And this is what makes the Nigerian situation peculiarly challenging with government behaving as if education, not to mention science, is of little or no value. What with the federal budget for education in 2025 peaking at a mere N3.52 trillion as against N4.91 trillion for the military in a total N47.9 trillion budgetary provision. Nigeria’s budget for education 2025 is just a mere quarter of UNESCO’s 26% recommended for education; education budget should have stood at N12.4 trillion. Even half of that sum for education should have gone way better, but Nigeria is no respecter of conventions it willing enters into.
That is why strategic interventions like that of NLNG is crucial. The company not only instituted a prize for scientists to shine and get handsome monetary reward valued at USD$100,000, it has embarked on a roadshow to rev up interest in the science prize that is lagging behind its literature counterpart. But more than lagging behind literature, the roadshow is a clarion call on the Nigerian science community to wake up. This is commitment at its best. While it is hoped that Nigerian scientists will reward NLNG’s uncommon stewardship to the science community with excellent projects, perhaps greater execution gap has yet to be filled since inception of the prize. While it’s easier to find readers for literary works, outcomes for the science present another headache. Science discovery in itself isn’t enough. What happens to the outcomes of rigorous research endeavours and innovations?
Nine winning works so far have been produced by scientists since 2004. But what has been the application outcomes of these research innovations? While a roadshow to enlist more scientists is good, what about industry application of the innovations already made? Who turns the outcomes of the nine innovations into usable utilities in homes or where appropriately applicable? What industrial application has discoveries been put to since 2004 when Prof Akpoveta Susu and his doctoral student Kingsley Abhulimen were rewarded for their breakthrough work titled, ‘Real-Time Computer Assisted Leak Detection/Location Reporting and Inventory Loss Monitoring System’? This is a useful discovery for NNPCL and those in the oil and gas sector where prevalent pipeline leakages occur to ruin the Niger Delta ecosystem and livelihoods. Has this technological innovation been put to use yet? Only recently an NNPCL’s pipe reportedly had leakages. Is this discovery in place to easily mitigate the leakage?
Four years after Prof. Susu’s invention in 2008, Dr. Ebenezer Meshida won the science prize with his innovation titled ‘Solution to Road Pavement Destabilisation by the Invention of ‘Lateralite’: A Stabilisation Flux for Fine Grained Lateritic Soils’. Given Nigeria’s poor road infrastructure network, any sensible person would have thought that this is one invention that should interest governments at both federal, state and local levels for prompt adoption. But 17 years later, Nigerian roads are worst than those in war-torn countries. Why hasn’t this innovation been put to use since? That’s one of Nigeria’s ‘government magic’ that legendary music maverick Fela sang about many years ago.
Other innovative discoveries over the years have practical application uses for healthcare and food security, but who has ventured to put these discoveries to use and society’s benefit? Is it Prof. Andrew Nok’s ‘Discovery of the Gene Responsible for the Creation of Sialidase (SD), an Enzyme which Causes Sleeping Sickness (Trypanosomiasis)’ in 2009 or ‘Improving Home and Community Management of Malaria: Providing the Evidence Base Multifaceted Efforts at Malaria Control in Research: 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)’, joint won by team researchers – Ikeoluwapo Ajayi, Ayodele Jegede, Bidemi Yusuf, Olugbenga Mokuolu and Chukwuma Agubata in 2017 and ‘Gains in Grain Yield of Released Maize (Zea Mays L.) Cultivars under Drought and Well-Watered Condition Development of Process Plant for Plantain Flour?’ in 2022 by Muhydideen Oyekunle, Shehu Ado, Sesan Peter Ayodeji and Emmanuel Olatunji Olatomilola?
And then there are scientific discoveries for high-powered industrial uses such as ‘Nanostructured Metal Hydrides for the Storage of Electrical Power from Renewable Energy Sources and for Explosion Prevention in High Voltage Power Transformers’ by Peter Ngene in 2018 and ‘Carbon Capture, Carbon Utilization, and Biomass Gasification and Energy Storage for Power Generation’ jointly won in 2019 by the Nigerian and Asian pair, Dr. Mathew Aneke and Professor Meihong Wang. They remain locked in laboratories.
While those listed above have been the outstanding works, it does not mean they are the only ones, because only a handful of scientists send in entries every year. Of course, there are other useful scientific discoveries that may never make it to The Nigeria Prize for Science level, but which are of practical application nonetheless. What happens to them? Who is harnessing these vast scientific assets for society’s practical use, be it government or individual companies? Indeed, where are the individual laboratories other than those in universities that should drive innovation for commercial use? What about Federal Institute for Industrial Research, Oshodi (FIIRO)? Who’s harnessing its research outcomes? Even the universities, how innovative are they in harnessing the scientific skills in the faculties of science and engineering? A lecturer at the University of Lagos told me in June that a certain professor of engineering suggest buying a bigger generating plant to resolve the epileptic power supply in the university! Date was Tuesday, June 2025 when Mr. Sam Omatseye read at the English department and the entire university was in total blackout. A scientific mind such as that professor who can’t think of harnessing the abundant sunlight for power has no place in a university. But that is an exception rather than the norm.
Ironically, the only innovation Nigerian universities have perfected since University of Lagos blazed the trail over a decade ago is the making of bottled water. It’s about the only breakthrough that they have successfully commercialised. This is as lame as it can get. For universities that should be at the vanguard of cutting-edge ideas and innovation, this is as trite as it can be. Which university has a Research and Development R&D unit to translate innovative ideas into practical uses with a view to selling them to industries? Which are their industry collaborators? None, likely. But that’s a niche area universities in developed countries have perfected to augment revenues and put their scientific innovations to practical use. But Nigerian universities are manufacturers of bottle water as the only scientific breakthrough all the learning there amounts to.
Interestingly, accountant and industrialist, Chief Mrs. Nike Akande, is on the Advisory Board for the science prize besides the chair and proven industrialist, Prof. Nnaji. And I have had to put them on the spot once why the prize’s scientific discoveries are yet to get practical application traction from industrialists like them since 2004. Or the chamber of commerce and industry that Chief Akande once led… The responses were as tepid as have been the case from the larger Nigerian manufacturing community. With Nigeria being a dumping ground for manufactured goods of all kinds, local manufacturing efforts is hugely challenged. Poor electricity, bad road networks that hinder easy flow of goods from one place to another cheaply doubly makes it hard to produce good in Nigeria. The failure of government to regulate influx of goods that can be manufactured locally is often cited as reason for lack of interest in harnessing local scientific discoveries.
But Africa’s richest man Alico Dangote recently put it succinctly when he challenged his fellow Nigerian rich men and women who prefer to buy private jets and Royce Rolls over setting up industrial concerns to absorb teeming Nigerian youth coming out of universities every year. The price of a private jet is more than enough to set up a cottage industry that can harness any of these scientific discoveries that are ready-made products as easy pick niche areas. But would they?
What about the federal Ministry of Science and Technology? What has been its role in harnessing local scientific discoveries such as those thrown up by The Nigeria Prize for Science? What partnership does the ministry forge with the science prize for onward translation into finished products? This was why in two articles in April 25, 2023 titled ‘Nigeria LNG science prize discoveries’ and published in The Guardian, Lagos, I raised similar concerns about lack of application of scientific discoveries by the manufacturing community. This would have transformed the Nigerian society from an import-dependent one that cedes away jobs to Europe and Asia to a manufacturing one that keeps jobs at home and stem the japaing tide, another Nigerian neologism for brain-drain. But three years after, Nigeria remains stuck in the same vicious circle of unproductivity.
I had concluded those two articles by calling on NLNG to, as a matter of national urgency, set up its own R&D unit to convert these innovative scientific ideas into practical uses. Readers buy the books that The Nigeria Prize for Literature throws up every year. That’s the practical use of that literary prize. But what’s the fate of The Nigeria Prize for Science? Nil application. Therefore, it’s only NLNG that has the managerial temperament to convert these scientific discoveries into usefulness. What NLNG needs is to set up a unit it directly oversees to take up some of these discoveries and turn them into practical products. For instance, it can partner with state governments in the Niger Delta where it operates to deploy Prof. Meshida’s road application discovery in fixing deplorable road networks in the region, as starting point and then later deploy nationwide. That would be a great start, as it seems clearly that only NLNG is about the only forward-thinking corporate entity that is keen on advancing the Nigerian society from its current static level to one of envy. Let NLNG therefore go the whole hug!
Of course, this would seem like asking too much of one company just the way the literary community makes so much demand from it, but clearly throwing up innovations every year without hope of ever applying them to practical utility must be a burden the prize organisers bear. Perhaps, it is why both the advisory board and NLNG teams decided on a roadshow to drum up further interest in the prize. Perhaps also, the team should take the roadshow to all the chambers of commerce and industries across the country, the ministry of science and technology, FIIRO, etc on the need to harness these scientific discoveries for applicable use and society’s overall benefits.
*Ajeluorou, author of ‘Igho Goes to Farm’ (children’s book), ‘Libations for Africa’ (poetry) and ‘Brides of Infidels’ (novella) and editor of ‘Moonbeam: An Anthology of Short Stories’ is the publisher of TheArtHubNig (www.thearthubng.com)
