Professor Hyacinth Ichoku, the Vice Chancellor of Veritas University, has urged industrialists and entrepreneurs to invest in research outcomes and translate them into marketable products.
Ichoku made this call during a reception ceremony organized by the Ministry of Communication, Innovation, and Digital Economy in honor of Veritas University in Abuja on Friday.
The event was held to commend the university for achieving first place in the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) Innovation Challenge 2023 competition.
This highly competitive award was organized by the African Telecommunication Union and sponsored by various organizations including Intel, Huawei, the International Telecommunications Union, the GSMA Humanitarian Innovation Fund, and Veritas University’s Software Engineering Laboratory.
The vice chancellor said: “Our major challenge is to get industrialists and entrepreneurs who can get involved in actually transforming these innovations into marketable products.
“It is not just the Veritas challenge, it is also the challenge of many other universities to find entrepreneurs and investors who can transform the outcome of research in the universities into products that can be available in the market.”
Ichoku encouraged investors to buy into the research outcomes that had taken the time and resources of students and their trainers, adding that this would help the nation’s developmental strides.
The vice chancellor described the reception organised for his school as inspiring.
“That minister deemed it wise to invite the university and the students to be here and to congratulate us for this milestone achievement was for us a great inspiration.
“We really thank him and his team for the great job they are doing. So, we are hoping that we go higher in terms of innovation.
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Mr. Stanley Andeobu, Coordinator of Software Exhibition and Conception, Department of Software Engineering, Veritas University called for funding to help commercialise the research outcomes from the university.
“We have actually tailored our solutions to homegrown solutions, and one of the things we are working on is electric vehicles that are self-driven, applications that will help reduce the ratio of doctors to patients in Nigeria.
“The standard of the WHO is one to 600 but in Nigeria, we have one to 5000 but our students have come up with a mobile app that will perform self-diagnosis for your ailment and go for a test instead of meeting a doctor.
“This will help reduce the ratio of doctor to patients on Nigeria, we have also been able to create drone systems to come security which we displayed during the competition.
“We need funding to help us establish those things to make them commercial viable,” Andeobu said.
Praise Joshua, one of the students who won the competition said it was an award well deserved going by efforts put in by the students and staff of the university and looked forward to winning greater awards in the future.
Minister of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, had earlier urged the university to become a model university, helping to drive innovation.
“Humanity will constantly be looking for better ways to do things, we live in a world that is constantly evolving, and we are challenging the universities;
“That while we are encouraging the private sector to invest in research, we need the academic sector to groom innovators with critical thinking about how to address these challenges,” Tijani said.
