The National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) says it has saved N192 billion through local content inclusion in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related businesses.
The Director-General of NOTAP, Dr Danazumi Ibrahim, made this known at a media briefing on Wednesday in Lagos, saying that the saving was between 2010 and 2016.
Ibrahim said that this was achieved through NOTAP’s refusal to approve the importation of technologies and services that could be rendered by Nigerians.
He said that the money, if not for NOTAP’s intervention, would have left the country as capital flight.
According to him, NOTAP’s mission is to ensure the acceleration of Nigeria’s drive toward a rapid technological revolution by an efficient assimilation or absorption of foreign technology.
“NOTAP’s mission is to ensure a concerted development of indigenous technological capacity, through a proactive commercialisation and promotion of locally motivated technologies,” he said.
The director-general said that about 90 per cent of technologies used in Nigeria were still being imported.
He, however, expressed confidence that the situation was improving, as NOTAP had secured about 38 patents for agencies and private researchers in the first half of 2017.
Ibrahim said that the patents were delivered to the researchers/institutions at no cost.
‘“NOTAP also introduced local vendor policy to assist in the development of local content initiative of the Federal Government.
“Most of the Technology Transfer Agreements handled by NOTAP are mainly on software development,” he said.
Ibrahim said that large chunk of money was leaving the country through software.
According to him, the major culprits of foreign software usage are the banks, as each bank want to outdo the other through the services they offer.
“We then put a law in place that any foreign software agreement we have to register must have local vendor.
“NOTAP has introduced a policy that 40 per cent of the annual maintenance fee should go to the local vendor working with the company and this has improved software development in Nigeria,” he said.
