The Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions (ASURI) on Thursday inducted the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu into its ‘Hall of Fame’ for the first time in the history of the Union.
Speaking with journalists after the induction, the National Secretary General of the Union, Dr Theophilus Ndubuaku, revealed that the Minister has shown commitment to actualising the mandate of ASURI more than anyone ever since Nigeria’s post independence.
He said, the inductee would be on record and shall be remembered by successive generations that he got the sitting President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to inaugurate the National Research Council to drive the policy of Research Institutions in Nigeria for over five decades.
Reacting to newsmen’s questions, he said: “Different organisations have different ways of keeping records of people who were instrumental to certain things. So ASURI came up with idea because we have so many people who have done a lot of things for ASURI. This is in line with our mandate as a Union.
“This Hall of Fame was established by the Union to keep Record and induct those who made impact on the activities and the struggle of Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions.
“On the induction of Dr Ogbonnaya Onu, ASURI has been complaining, but our complaints are issues that have been on ground since independence and it is since the past six years that we have started seeing government taking note of our complaints and taking measures of how to resolve them.
“Let me give you one good example of what the Minister of Science Technology and Innovation has done. The Minister was appointed in 2015, and within two months he assumed office, the National Research and Innovation Council was inaugurated by the President. That means he has this in mind before he was appointed.
“And this National Research and Innovation Council is the body that supposed to coordinate researches and this National Research and Innovation Council has been on the drawing board since independence because it was initiated in the sixties when the first national policy on Science and Technology was drawn.
“Within that document; the major component of that document; the driving force of that document is the National Research and Innovation Council. So, it is a Council that supposed to be established to drive the National Science and Technology policy.
“So, if it was initiated in the sixties, by the time Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu came into office, it has been reviewed twelve times and that Council wasn’t established. In fact, it was again, reviewed this year which was sponsored by UNESCO and the major issue is, why hasn’t the Council been established?
“It was Ogbonnaya Onu that got the President to inaugurate the Council because Mr President is the Chairman of governing Board of the Council with 14 Ministers who supervise research institutions as members”, he said.
