Nicholas Ojo
Nigeria’s Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday said hydra-headed challenges at national and global levels, such as poverty, inequality, and global warming alongside a world that is increasingly defined by technology, would require profound thinking and planning.
The vice president asserted that the world is moving literally on technology steroids, noting that it is moving so quickly that it is possible, if one is not at the cutting edge, to be left behind.
Osinbajo made this assertion while speaking at the Presidential Villa during the inauguration of the Board of Trustees for the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies’ Endowment Fund and the institution’s Academic Advisory Committee.
He explained that there will be problems of Climate Change and all the implications for the future of the planet and the socio-economic circumstances of the world, and in particular, developing countries and of course, Nigeria.
A statement sent to Quest Times on Thursday, December 15 by Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, quoted the vice president as saying:
“In the coming years, NIPSS will be called upon to interpret, predict and plan for a world literarily on technology steroids, challenged by poverty and inequality and in a mortal battle with disastrous warming. This is the hydra nature of the challenge,” the VP declared at the event submitting that NIPSS therefore should not be constrained by resources.
“In the coming years, it (NIPSS) will become perhaps even more challenged to do much more. The coming years for many of us who are watching and studying, I think it is very evident that what we see and the challenges (not just local but global) that we will face will be of the order that will require great introspection and thinking and a lot of planning.
“So, I believe that NIPSS and what we are trying to constitute today is one that will have to plan, predict and interpret the trends of the coming years. And those trends will be many. One will be the various challenges that the world will face aside from food security, is the huge problems of poverty on a scale that appears to be increasing all across the world and I speak not just in our own region but globally.
“And at the same time this is a world that is moving very quickly on technology, as a matter of fact, the world is moving literarily on technology steroids, it is moving so quickly that it is possible, if we are not at the cutting edge, to be left behind. And also, there will be problems (as we are seeing already) of Climate Change and all the implications for the future of our planet and the socio-economic circumstances of the world, and in particular, developing countries and of course, Nigeria.”
Emphasizing the need for the adoption of new ways of funding research and related activities at the institution, the VP noted that “all the Think-Tanks in the world are reviewing their approaches to research and they are all thinking, what are we going to be required to do in the next few years?”
Tasking the new board of trustees and the institution to take up the challenge of finding solutions to contemporary issues, Prof. Osinbajo said, “NIPSS has before it an opportunity to become one of the leading and foremost thought leaders in the world in the next few years, I think that there is a real opportunity now to do so.
“I think this is the opportunity for NIPSS to really take on the mandate and use that mandate creatively to prepare Nigeria for the future and to prepare our region and the world for the future. And this is why the constitution of the board of trustees is important.”
Speaking further about the institution’s reliance on government’s budgetary allocations alone to fund research, Prof. Osinbajo noted that “we cannot have an institution of the importance of NIPSS that rely solely on government funding. It is almost absurd that the foremost Think-Tank in Nigeria will be run like a civil service institution, and it will depend, almost on a daily basis, on government budget, that is not how think-tanks are run.”
“There is no major Think-Tank that is run like that. The simple reason is that the independence of the Think-Tank is also important, and I speak now of academic independence, and academic independence is not only about freedom of speech, that is not what is even more important.
“It is more the ability to do unrestrained research, unrestrained meaning, without the constraints of resources. You should not be constrained by resources, given the enormity of the task that the institution has, which is why I think that the role of this board of trustees is very well cut out,” the vice president added.