Stakeholders Harp on Training Innovators for Economic Diversification

Stakeholders are calling for the restructuring of the educational sector to accommodate specialized training of innovators to drive economic diversification.
Speaking at the 2015 Verdant Zeal Innovention Summit held in Lagos, foremost economist, Professor Pat Utomi, noted that education and culture were critical to developing growth and development
through innovation.
He said, “When we look at the value chain and the resources of every part of this country, you will see that with innovation, we would achieve the required growth and development. Right now, we have the population, but what we need is the right educational policy.”
Sir Steve Bamidele Omojafor, Chairman, Verdant Zeal stated; “We are bringing innovation in terms of human capital, human capacity building, everything that has to do with job and orientation. It is about how we can change the existing structure and offer full confidence to investors, Nigeria being the giant of Africa. That is what we do.”
He noted that innovation would do a lot in terms of policy issues and advocacy, stressing: “Innovation is about changing mind set and doing old things in new ways, we don’t regenerate if we don’t do things that are contemporary in terms of timing and development thinking. We are focusing on education, technology, agriculture, the people, the passion you have in doing things, integrity and change of orientation. Once you have that change of orientation, you can have that national growth and development that you desire.”
He assured that the white paper would be turned it into a communique which would be sent to the federal government, irrespective of who wins the forth coming election.
“It is very clear that we have been facing some obvious challenges. Revenue is not what it used to be and It is obvious that the oil price has continued to go down, there is infrastructural decay and it is as if inflation has continued to be on the upward stream. What we have seen so far is that everything has been very strenuous and we are trying to build a system of innovation that would move this country to the next level, irrespective of whoever wins the election. Omojafor noted.
Lere Baale, Director Business School, Netherlands, noted that production innovation has been encouraged by the ability to recognise opportunities, stressing that when a problem is described in a positive way, opportunities would be seen.