Promoting Dev Through Technical Partnership

The National Office of Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) is established to, among other mandates, ensure evaluation and registration of technology transfer agreements and promotion of intellectual property.
Realising the importance which the Federal Government accords the roles of the agency, the Director- General of the agency, Dr Dan Azumi Ibrahim, said NOTAP’s activities were cardinal to national development.
He said in Lagos recently that the agency would, therefore, be ready to collaborate with sister agencies and relevant stakeholders in ensuring the transfer and domestication of foreign technology for the socio-economic development.
Leading a delegation of NOTAP staff and other stakeholders in a visit to a milk producing company, FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria Plc., Lagos, he promised that the agency would do a lot in improving on technical partnership.
According to him, the collaboration between NOTAP and the company is a follow-up to the Public Private Partnership initiative in dairy development project agreement by the two organisations.
He said NOTAP also partnered with the Patent Office, Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment, to enable inventors to register their Intellectual Property speedily.
He said the agency would encourage young innovators to contribute to national development and depend less on foreign technology.
“The challenges in obtaining patent certificate and the cumbersome payment process in terms of bulk payment for patent registration slow down the process.
“There is the need for NOTAP and Patent Office offices to partner in order to ameliorate the problems associated with patenting in the country,’’ he observed.
He also said NOTAP collaborated with PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc., a major British manufacturer of personal healthcare products and consumer goods on research and laboratory analyses to promote sustainable development.
He said that the partnership started when NOTAP noticed that most of the research and laboratory analyses of the multinationals in the country were carried out outside the country.
He expressed dismay at the lack of well equipped research laboratory and other research facilities in the country.
“The agency, therefore, approached PZ Cussons to assist in upgrading the laboratory of some universities to ensure that high level laboratory analyses are carried out within the country,’’ he said.
He observed that by such partnership, Nigeria would be able to transform knowledge to socio-economic solutions and assets that would bring about sustained national development.
Ibrahim said by registering technology transfer agreement, which ought to be the primary function of NOTAP, it discovered that more than 90 per cent of the technology to power Nigerian economy was foreign.
“To change the trend and launch Nigeria into the league of technological self-sufficient nations, there is the need for multinational companies to give back to the society through corporate social investment.
“PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc. responded by donating the sum of N115 million for equipment and logistics for upgrading of chemical laboratories of the University of Calabar.
“Moddibo Adama University of Technology and National Institute for Chemical Technology, Zaria benefitted,’’ Ibrahim said.
He said that upgrading of the laboratories in University of Calabar had been commissioned while the upgrading of the equipment in the National Institute for Chemical Technology, Zaria would be commissioned soon.
He commended PZ Cussons for showing a high sense of responsibility to the Nigeria through strategic partnership.
Mr Christos Giannopoulos, the Chief Executive Officer of PZ Cussons, said the benefiting institutions had started showing good results.
He said PZ Cussons was involved in supporting research and education as part of its corporate social responsibility.
Giannopoulos noted that the company had executed 55 capital projects spread across the six geopolitical zones of the country, observing that 80 per cent of the projects was on education development.
“Formulation of product involves laboratory research; therefore, upgrading Nigerian university laboratories was very crucial because solutions to PZ Cussons’s production challenges could come from Nigerian universities.
“This is, therefore, a challenge to the students and staff of the institution to maximise the benefit of the state-of- the- art laboratory equipment provided by PZ Cussons,’’ Giannopoulos said.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calabar, Prof. Zana Akpagu, in appreciation of the efforts of NOTAP and PZ Cussons, promised that the equipment would be put to proper use.
He called on the researchers and students to maximise the benefits of the laboratory equipment for skill development, research and innovation.
Similarly,  the Chairman Senate Committee on Science and Technology, Prof. Ajayi Boroffice, commended NOTAP for its activities.
According to Ajayi, the establishment of 39 Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Offices in some tertiary institutions is a demonstration of understanding global trends in intellectual property development.
“As a former lecturer, I understand the huge financial requirement involved in the establishment of these offices.
“I hope a special research fund can be set aside to enable researchers carry out demand driven researches,’’ Ajayi said.
Mr Sam Bassey, an inventor, however, expressed concern about what he described as delay in getting patents, saying the process of protecting one’s invention should be made faster and simpler.
He described a patent as a government authority or licence conferring a right or title for a set period, especially the sole right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention issued by NOTAP.
He said the slow process of getting an invention commercialised constituted a challenge to inventors.
“I must say NOTAP needs to step up with the revolution that is going on in technology; it needs to make the process of obtaining patents faster and simpler for one to protect inventions.
“Another challenge is the problem of effecting good policy in the area of patent infringement.
“I have also noticed some other inventors’ intellectual rights being infringed upon by individuals and companies such that royalty that is meant for them is denied them,’’ he observed.
Another inventor, Mr Benneth Okoye, decried what he observed as bureaucratic bottlenecks in the registration of patents.
Okoye, who invented Benneth Power Source, a device that saves power for use in electrical appliances, said the many requirements that inventors had to come up with was discouraging.
“Investors in the country do not believe in long term investments, they want a return on investment in the short term and as you know research takes a long period of time.
“So, the enabling environment is not there and even when government wants to intervene, bureaucratic bottles-necks will slow down the process.
“One thing about this intellectual thing is that it keeps bothering you, if the inspiration comes and you don’t do it, you can be walking on the street and be talking to yourself,’’ he said.
He, therefore, called on NOTAP to make registration of patents less cumbersome for inventors so that they would be encouraged to do more investigations that will propel socio-economic development of the nation.
Onuegbu writes for NAN.

Perpetua Onuegbu