President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, who said this in Abuja, explained that the law would help boost research and generate the much-needed foundation for the nation’s quest for industrialisation.
He insisted that without research, the quest for industrialisation would turn into a pipe dream.
Also, the Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions (ASURI) and a coalition of civil society organisations also appealed to Buhari to sign the NRIC Bill into law before handing over.
The NRIC Bill, passed by the Senate on March 21, is presently awaiting concurrence by the House of Representatives.
The Guardian gathered that Hon. Henry Nwawuba, who sponsored the Bill, has since forwarded it to the Chairman of the House Committee on Rules and Business, Hon. Abubakar Hassan Fulata, on March 27, for approval to be listed for concurrence only.
Based on the union’s conviction that the NRIC will extricate Nigeria out of economic doldrums, ASURI formed a coalition of 40 Non-Governmental Organisations to rev up advocacy for the enactment of the NRIC Bill.
Encouraged by that development and writing under the aegis of ASURI/Civil Society Coalition/Campaign for Research Funding and Strategies for National Transformation, the union affirmed that NRIC is the vital funding component of the Federal Government approved National Policy on Science, Technology and Innovation (NPSTI), which was initiated since the 1960s as the much-needed institutionalised funding mechanism for research.
It added: “Unfortunately, the most important component of the policy, which is the establishment of the NRIC, has been sidetracked for lack of political will and nonchalance by successive governments. We make bold to state that without activating the institutionalised funding mechanism for research, which NRIC represents, technological development will continue to elude Nigeria.”
The letter was signed on behalf of the Coalition by the Secretary General of ASURI, Prof. Theophilus Ndubuaku, who doubles as Convener of the Coalition.
Reminding Buhari of what he said on January 7, 2016 while inaugurating the NRIC in his capacity as the statutory Chairman of the Council that Nigeria would soon start producing Nobel Laureates, the Coalition said it was not in doubt that the whole essence of NRIC, which also consists the Vice President and all Ministers supervising Research Institutions as members, is not lost on the government.
Ndubuaku said what the Bill only seeks to do is to give legal muscle to an existing government agency which seeks to transform Nigeria.”
