British-American Open University of California has rewarded the best Nigerian patriots and performing leaders with honourary awards.
The honourary doctorate and professorial awards were presented to the awardees by Nigerian dignitaries during yesterday’s induction at the National Merit House in Abuja.
About 42 professionals, entrepreneurs, academics, and patriots in the private and public sectors were inducted into the Hall of Fame and decorated with award insignia, presided over by Prof. Paul Godwin Udofia, chairman of the Board of Trustee of the Institution.
In a lecture entitled “The Hidden and Latent Keys To Nigerian Emergence As one of G-21 Nations Under President Bola Ahmed Tunubu,” the key note speaker, Prof. Paul Godwin Udofia, challenged inventors to rise up from the ashes of the nation’s woos and re-invent Nigeria to catch up with other developed and actively developing nations of the world.
According to Prof. Udofia, the destiny of Nigeria does not lie in the nation’s mineral resources, crude oil, in the monthly sharing of cash allocations to states and local government areas, in taxation or our agricultural endowments but in Inventors and massive investments in Nigerian men and women, if it must escape it’s debt trap.
Udofia said, “Laws rule the whole universe, extant laws. Nigerians have violated the extant laws, and the punishment is heavy indebtedness. Anytime you see a country heavily indebted, that country has violated the extant laws of the universe. Any time you visit a city, a family is heavily indebted, and that city, that family has violated the extant laws of the universe.
“There is nothing to celebrate, no cause for celebration in Nigeria until the day we start creating a generation of Inventors, Investors, growing numbers of Entrepreneurs, and Academia with skills. The day we start raising Inventors, investors in different states and local governments in Nigeria to re–create new products and made – in – Nigeria goods, that will boost our Gross Domestic Products (GDP) from a merely $199bn, less than that of California State, Sweden to a higher height, then we can be out our woos and celebrate.”
Prof. Udofia assured the audience of partnering with the British American Open University, Kings College British American Institute and investors to form a Forum of Inventors, Investors, Academia and a sum of N 5 m award for any new inventor, whether educated or not, every six months, for purpose of discovery and promotion of new products in Nigeria.
“This is about the soul of Nigeria, the soul of our fatherland, the soul of all of us, the soul of our children. If we fail to do this, mourners will go out en masse on our streets, and part of the corners will be you, me and our children and those yet unborn”.
In an interview with Dr Ortis Orji, the country director of the British American Open University in California, he expressed optimism at the effulgence and annual lecture’s success, which raises Nigerians’ consciousness of what we lack. So, it’s a clarion call to harness Nigeria’s abundant resources.
“We will come out with an organisation to organise competitions like a ‘talent hunt’ every year, so they can come out with what they can do realistically. There is no way we cannot market new products like a power supply from soak away. One professor has come up with. It is for us to ensure it is real, then register the Patent Right, then push it out to our nation and the world.”
Dr Orji challenged our ingenious professors, doctors, and Nigerian youth not to wait for the government to do everything for them but to go out and find investors to invest in them, as no one is not interested in making more money.
While expressing optimism that Nigerians, especially youth, are highly blessed with the creativity they deploy in negative ventures like Scams, 419, and kidnapping, they can be mentored to redirect that creativity to positive discoveries and inventions that could better their lives of destitution and save Nigeria from our current endemic poverty, religious, ethnic crisis, and insecurity across the nation.
The induction witnessed critical contributions from eminent personalities, including Dr Ameh Joseph Friday, the administrator of Kings College British American Business School; university vice-chancellor Prof David Brue Day; and other high-profile personalities among the inductees.