₦airaland Forum

The leadership of Entrepreneurship Tonic, a community of young and aspiring entrepreneurs, created with a view to democratizing entrepreneurship capacity development and information dissemination, to create a tribe of job creators who also find solutions to key societal challenges. The Entrepreneurship Tonic Led by its Convener, Mohammed Basah, as part of its ongoing national stakeholder’s engagement, paid a working visit to the management of National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP). The stakeholders’ engagement tour which is part of a feedback exchange and partnership forming mechanism for Entrepreneurship Tonic saw the organization engage with the management of NOTAP led by its Director General, Dr. Dan Azumi Mohammed Ibrahim.

Speaking at the event, the Convener Mr. Mohammed Basah pointed out that “NOTAP has done a lot to uplift the lot of Nigerian businesses through solid project development and a higher volume of advocacy by the management of the agency”, while going further to state that “Entrepreneurship Tonic is desirous of providing platforms for its members to be able to take advantage of the expertise of NOTAP to ensure that Nigerian entrepreneurs get the best of deals from their foreign partners to further the cause of national development”.

Dr. Ibrahim briefed the Entrepreneurship Tonic team on the mandate of NOTAP and the strides they have made in fulfilling that mandate to the benefit of Nigerian entrepreneurs and increasing the technology pool of Nigeria. Dr. Ibrahim pointed out to his visitors that “NOTAP registers agreements between Nigerian companies and their foreign partners using 3 parameters namely: Economic, Legal and Technical, to ensure that technology transfer and local capacity building components of such deals are protected”.

Dr. Ibrahim also informed his visitors that “NOTAP is working to bridge the gap between local academic research and commercial adoption of research results, seeing as Nigeria has the highest number of research papers in Africa, which aren’t translated into research innovations.” In this wise NOTAP, according to the Director General, is persuading private companies “to adopt technological development as major component of their CSR, rather than the regular drilling of boreholes and other transient interventions. This initiative has led to sponsorship of Nigerians by private companies including Airtel, and Nestle among others which has produced PhD holders who have carried out research in Weaning Food for babies transitioning from breastfeeding and another in network security.”

Dr. Ibrahim stated his commitment to partner with all well-meaning groups to deliver on NOTAP’s mandate. While NOTAP has since saved Nigeria over 80billion Naira, in capital flight, the office has also gotten companies like PZ to commit to provision of laboratories in academic institutions and research institutes to the tune of over 400million Naira.

The Civil Society Network for Good Governance, a conglomerate of 87 civil society organizations, which are working in diverse areas of human endeavour, to amplify members’ voices in the cause of enthroning people centered governance in Nigeria.
The Civil Society Network received with great pleasure the news of the agreement between the Nigeria Football Federation and Air Peace, for an initial fee of 300million Naira, which would see Air peace serve as the official airline sponsor of all national teams.
This sponsorship deal crystalizes our lengthy advocacy for the leadership of the NFF to be allowed to do their job in an environment devoid of rancor, in a clear departure from the recent past wherein disgruntled and unpatriotic elements would cook up frivolous petitions against the body. It is on record that these allegations continued to be recycled from one security agency to the other even though they had never been proven in a competent court of law.

Our position all along, which had been established in series of correspondences with the Presidency, security agencies and all the anti-graft agencies coupled with several press conferences and releases, had been that the lengthy investigations which sometimes included questioning of sponsors who had to leave their private businesses unattended, had been a major cog in the wheel of efforts of the current NFF board to attract sponsors. Thankfully President Muhammadu Buhari intervened and sanity has been restored into the affairs of the football ecosystem, which has culminated in this unprecedented sponsorship deal by a local airline. That this is happening at a time some are questioning the viability of Africa’s largest economy shows that the Nigerian economy remains resilient and is capable of rediscovering its bearings on a more solid footing.

We congratulate the leadership of the NFF on this milestone and call on them not to rest on their oars in reaching out to more corporate sponsors, to wean Nigerian football off government funding and the complications associated with it. We call on other private sector players to give stronger consideration to sports sponsorship as a major pillar of their CSR and sustainability plans, as sports is one of the major unifying factor among Nigerians. We equally assure Nigerians that we shall continue to drive advocacy for best practices in our football management to make us more competitive in the global stage.

Signed:
Adefila Kamal
National President