FG to involve NISER researchers in national dev, says Agba

Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba has assured researchers at the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) that the federal government would need their expertise in the preparation of a long-term national development plan that would begin next year.

Agba gave the assurance at an interactive session with the Director General of NISER, Dr. Folarin Gbadebo-Smith and top management staff members during his official visit to the institute in Ibadan at the weekend.

Institute calls for inclusion of TB treatment in health insurance

NISER is a parastatal under the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, which has been saddled with the responsibility of developing a successor plan to the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (2017-2020).

Agba said that NISER is important and strategic to the nation’s economy, pointing out that “you have a role to play in our national development planning.

“The director general is a member of the steering committee that is working on our forthcoming national development plan. There are different thematic groups. If the director general needs to involve some of the researchers and eggheads here in the thematic groups, he should let me know.”

The minister, who was thereafter led on a tour of facilities at the institute by Dr Gbadebo-Smith, said there was infrastructure deficit everywhere in the country because “when we had money as a nation, we spent it wrongly; the governments in power then misplaced the funds.

“We are fortunate now that we have President Muhammadu Buhari, who is very prudent in the management of public finance. He is giving attention to the development of critical infrastructure such as rails and roads.”

He assured NISER management that he would encourage the National Assembly standing committees on planning to visit to see firsthand, the state of the facilities at the institute.

The minister said this would guide them when considering appropriations to the institute in the next year’s budget, disclosing that last year, even before he thought of visiting the institute, he ensured that N200 million was added to the institute’s 2020 budget.

He directed the management to furnish his office with all its infrastructure requirements and also to prioritise them, promising to work on elevating the status of the institute from that of a research organization to an educational institution.