By Vera Chinonso Aliyu and Ishola Adeleke, YeyeNews.com, October 30, 2021
The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation has assured the President and the nation that the country will be manufacturing quality erasers before the end of 2023. The minister gave the assurance during a presentation of his scorecard at the recently concluded Ministerial Retreat.
While making his presentation, the minister congratulated the president for the great achievement in approving the change of name of his ministry from the Ministry of Science and Technology to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. “Mr. President, I want to congratulate you for the milestone achievement of approving the renaming of this important ministry by adding the innovation component.”
The minster went on to say that “The absence of innovation had become a drawback to our national development and can be blamed for our failure to meet the 2018 target for producing pencils in the country. But now that we are beginning to innovate, we have decided to take our target a notch higher. Mr. President, we are proud to announce that by 2023, we shall be delivering high quality erasers from our factories straight to school pupils in their classroom” to the applause of the audience, including President Buhari, according to a credible source in the meeting.
An aide in the vice president’s office who is in charge of documenting the achievements of the government confirmed the minister’s plans to YeyeNews.com reporter. “The Buhari government is determined to industrialize the country. We have achieved so many great feats since 2015 and we are poised to do more. The plan to manufacture erasers will be a great leap in Nigeria’s industrialization efforts. No government since independence has achieved as much as this government”, the aide boosted.
But a development expert Salihu Ahmed questioned the necessity for any serious government to embark on such a mundane plan knowing that important sectors like steel development are crying for attention. Speaking with YeyeNews.com, Mr. Ahmed expressed surprise that a forum like the ministerial retreat was reduced to discussing “kindergatten” issues instead of serious matters of governance. “How can we be celebrating a plan to manufacture erasers at this time when small nations are silently contributing groundbreaking achievements to global development? It is unfortunate that mediocrity has now been elevated to a statecraft in this country”.
