Nigeria saves N5trn from import reduction in 4 years – Onu

The federal government has said the country cumulatively saved about N5.03trn from import reduction in four years, from 2017 to 2020.   

The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Ogbonnaya Onu, said this on Friday in Abuja at the closing ceremony of the week-long Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Expo 2022, with the theme, ‘Sustaining National Economic Growth through Science and Innovation’.  

• APC crisis: How Buni, Yahaya Bello defeated El-Rufai’s camp
• ASUU and the travail of Nigerian education

He said the figure was based on the data provided by the United Nations Harmonised System Code and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).   

Onu said the country’s savings from import reduction was N613.6bn in 2017; N412.8bn in 2018; N2.3trn in 2019 and N1.71trn in 2020.   

The minister added that in the past six years, the country had made a significant breakthrough in providing remedies to major diseases in form of drugs and medicine derived from indigenous natural ingredients, adding that they were at different levels of certification, including clinical trials.  

Speaking earlier, the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said the STI had been helpful in the production of solar panels to provide electricity to rural primary health care centres.  

Ehanire said inter-ministerial cooperation was needed to achieve a meaningful breakthrough in the delivery of health care services to Nigerians.