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From Joe Effiong, Uyo
Failure of previous efforts by the Federal Government agencies to drive successfully science, technology and innovations (STI) in national development has been attributed to the failure to wrap communication around such efforts to make them easily assimilable.
This assertion was canvassed at the 23rd annual international conference/annual general meeting of ACCE/UNIZIK 2022, tagged: “Communicating Science, Technology, and Innovation in times of Economic Distress, Terror, and a Pandemic.”
According to a statement by the Council President, Nnamdi Ekeanyanwu, yesterday, it noted with regrets that previous efforts to tie STI to Nigeria’s development goals could not yield fruit due to failure on the part of agencies saddled with such responsibility to integrate communication components to drive the initiative.
The ACCE president, therefore, warned that such efforts might still yield no desired success if their drivers continue to ignore the communication component in their national assignment.
He said the theme was therefore selected, most carefully to specifically and importantly “explore, examine, and dilate in all relevant parameters, the dimensions in which journalism, broadcasting, new media, public relations, films, advertising, and communication education/research interface with STIs to enact a remediation of the development crises in Nigeria and other developing countries.”
Justifying why the nation needed this all-important component in its drive to development, Ekeanyanwu said: “Nigeria, in particular, is a nation of several paradoxes: resource-rich but poor country; a country of talented, vibrant citizens but still grappling with teeming unemployed people; a population rich in diaspora exploits but struggling at home.
Conditions are worsened by bouts of terrorist attacks from bandits, separatist groups, dissident agitators, and religious extremists.
“Add these to the distressed economic times spawned by years of political mismanagement and corruption as well as the debilitating effects of COVID-19 pandemic and the troubling environmental/food/climate crises; it becomes apparent that solutions must be sought, and urgently too. Some of the solutions lie in STI.
“This conference is both apt and timely as it is purposed to interrogate the place of STI, including the emerging ones such as genomics, biotechnology, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics, Nano-science/technology; in the resolution of Nigeria’s security, food, health, environmental as well as economic crises.”
He gave the assurance that ACCE would continue to lead the discourse in highlighting the importance of STI in the nation’s development goals as well as emphasise the unequivocal role of communication in harnessing the importance of STI for better public appreciation and societal application.
The ACCE president said he was excited by the quality and calibre of the lead discussants, Herbert Batta of the University of Uyo, whom he said has more than 25 years investment in scholarship and research in the areas of Science, Health and Environmental Communication.
“I am very certain his lead paper will challenge us all,” he said.
