Largely as a result of the successes recorded in the mining sector by Governor Abdullahi Sule in Nasarawa State, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said it is establishing a University Innovation Pod (UniPod) at the state owned university in Keffi.

UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, Elsie G. Attafuah, made this known when she led a delegation from the foremost UN development agency on a courtesy call on Governor Sule at the Governor’s Lodge in Abuja on Wednesday.

Attafuah said the UNDP is coming into Nasarawa State because of the quality of leadership Governor Sule is providing especially in the mining sector in order to support the vision of his administration.

She explained that the UniPods are innovations that are located within public universities where ideas are generated with the purpose of connecting research to private sector.

Attafuah noted that, being the largest development agency in the United Nations family, the UNDP is to pushing the development agenda through addressing issues of inequality, climate change, with the agency in Nigeria strategically focusing on three primary areas of mining, energy and climate change, as well as peace and security.

“In Nasarawa, you have been showing fantastic leadership in the area of mining, and we are asking ourselves how we can support that vision,” she added.

She pointed out that the UNDP employs key enablers to facilitate development, through innovation, digitalization and development finance.

“This is an area that we are very very passionate about. Recently we launched our innovation centre in Lagos which we provide support to many citizens and to states in the country. We have launched a film tech hub where we can use technology to be able to support many things. One of the things that we are paying great attention to is our universities. We feel that universities are places where we birth ideas. But most of our researchers are on paper.

“Can we create spaces in universities where if I am a student I could go into that space and say I have an idea and how do I take my idea all the way, prototype it and hopefully gets support to commercialization and market.

“We must do something for public universities. What we are trying to do is to set up what we call university pods. In this university pods we have spaces where people can create, collaborate across departments, prototype, and we we can have technology transfer offices that can support that,” she said.

Explaining further, Nathan Tumahamme, Programme Analyst with the UNDP said the agency has identified three areas it will be supporting the mining value chain as establishing a minerals processing plant in order to ensure that only processsed minerals are exported outside the state, a laboratory to ascertain the quality of minerals in the state, as well as providing facility for field research to understand various sources of minerals in the state.

“Around the whole value chain, within the university, students will be able to know the kinds of jobs they need to tag into at the time of processing, at the of mining and at the time of marketing. Because they will be able to understand around the whole value chain and at the end of the day they will start to come up with start-ups, innovations around the whole value chain for the young people to be able to get jobs,” he added.

Tumahamme said the UNDP is undertaking the project at NSUK so that the university will be in position to support the research around the mining sector so that they are able to provide the policies that would support the leadership provided by Governor Sule in terms of the mining sector.

Responding, Governor Abdullahi Sule commended the UNDP for the continued partnership with Nasarawa State and Nigeria as a whole, especially that the resident representative is someone that understands the challenges confronting the country.

The governor further appreciated the UNDP’s interest in areas such as mining, energy and climate, as well as peace and security.

Governor Sule identified energy as one of the most pressing challenges confronting both Nasarawa State and Nigeria as a whole, recounting how as a member of the 2009 energy committee of the Vision 202020, the country is still unable to attain its stated objectives in power generation.

“The essence of that committee was that by the year 2020, Nigeria would be the 20th most viable economy in the world. And in order for you to achieve that, one of the first things was in energy. At the time, Nigeria was producing 6000 megawatt. And we said that by the year 2020, we would be able to generate 50 megawatt of power. That will make us by that time number one just a little bit ahead of South Africa. That was the mission. 2020 has gone. We are still generating 6 megawatt of power or less. These are some of the challenges we have in the country,” he said.

He recalled his recent trips to India and China as efforts towards addressing challenges in the areas of energy and agriculture.

The governor was particularly happy that the UNDP identified three key areas to intervene in Nigeria, saying in Nasarawa State he did the same thing when he was elected governor in 2019.

“For us in Nasarawa State that is what I did. I know we have battalion of challenges in Nasarawa State but we picked two or three and said these are the areas that we are going to do. Not that we are going to abandon health, we are not going to abandon education. We are not going to abandon any other sector but say we picked two and concentrate on them and see if we can achieve our goals. We said we are a state of solid minerals no news, nothing is happening in solid minerals. So, what can we do?” he said.

He expressed satisfaction that his modest efforts in the area of mining are being recognized as confirmed recently by the Minister of Solid Minerals, Dele Alake, who while briefing the council of state during its recent meeting at the presidential villa said that 40 percent of the achievements recorded in the country’s mining sector was recorded in Nasarawa State.

“We said we are a state where 80 percent of us are into agriculture. What have we done in agriculture? We focus on that. That is the direction we are going. Meantime, we came in with a document called Nasarawa Economic Development Strategy (NEDS). That document picks all these other areas and focused on them. What are the potentials and what are the challenges in each one of these areas, education, agriculture, mining, health, infrastructure. These are the challenges and these are what we are going to do. Who are the people to drive this? The civil servants. What can we bring into our civil service, how can we motivate these people to work harder? How do we now develop a strategy to work with the people in synergy and not to work at cross purposes?” he added.

Governor Sule further appreciated the UNDP for selecting the Nasarawa State University Keffi for its interventions, stressing that a minerals laboratory would further assist the efforts of the administration in identifying the purity of its mineral resources.

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