How Grassroots Innovation Challenge Became Part of Nigeria’s Industrial Policy

Ayodeji Ake

At the State House, the Federal Government framed InnovateNaija as more than an awards night. It set the programme inside a larger argument about what Nigeria makes, and what it should stop importing.

The message President Bola Ahmed Tinubu sent to the InnovateNaija ceremony on October 7 was less about prizes than about production. Delivered by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Dr Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, it described the awards as an investment in the innovators’ ability to contribute to Nigeria’s economic and industrial transformation. The president’s agenda, the minister said, puts a productive, inclusive and resilient economy at the centre, measured in decent jobs, stronger local industries, more exports and better livelihoods. Science, technology, and innovation sit at the heart of that plan.

Udeh restated the government’s commitment to “home-grown technological solutions towards Nigeria’s industrialization”, and stressed that research, investment and industry must work together to turn the country’s people and natural resources into productive capacity.

Quality, Not Patriotism

One line from the minister deserves more attention than it received. He said Nigerian-made products should win buyers because they meet the required standard and offer value, not only because they are Nigerian. That is a demanding test. It asks local manufacturers to compete head-on with imports, and it asks the government to back them with the testing, certification, and infrastructure that make quality possible.

NASENI’s Executive Vice-Chairman, Khalil Suleiman Halilu, set out how the agency intends to meet that test. In a keynote titled ‘Nigeria’s Innovation Era,’ he said the country must move decisively from consumption to creation. NASENI is reorganising its research and development work around three principles: Creation, Collaboration and Commercialisation. In his telling, Nigeria does not lack ideas or talent; it lacks strong links to prototypes and production, and between innovators and industry.

The Machinery Behind the Mandate

NASENI has physical assets to put behind that ambition. When the challenge was launched in 2025, the agency said winners would join its innovation hub incubation programme and gain access to its 12 institutes and centre of excellence in Abuja, with their machinery, laboratories and manufacturing support. The launch carried a slogan that sums up the policy: with the right support, “Nigerian ingenuity becomes Nigerian industry.”

The finalists show why that support matters. Zang Luka of Plateau State makes USB cables in Nigeria but still imports about 60 per cent of his materials, and he has asked government for help with machinery, tools and production space so he can scale up and eventually export across Africa. His case illustrates the distance between making a product locally and building a local supply chain.

States Join the Effort

Industrialisation is not only a federal project. The governors of Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Plateau and Kaduna matched NASENI’s N2.5 million state grants. Kaduna’s Deputy Governor, Dr Hadiza Sabuwa Balarabe, called InnovateNaija “a renaissance of Nigerian ingenuity” and argued that a modern nation’s wealth is measured as much by its people’s inventiveness as by its natural resources. Her state’s own champion, Abdulrahaman Bin Umar of Anchau, built a drone that can spray up to 11 hectares of farmland in an hour.

What Will Prove the Mandate

Policy statements are cheap; factories are not. The test of this industrialisation push will be visible in a few concrete places: whether the National Research and Innovation Development Fund bill becomes law and is funded, whether NASENI’s institutes actually produce for the winners at scale, and whether products like PenKeep and the Smart Pond reach buyers at a price that beats the imported alternative.

InnovateNaija has shown that the inventors exist in every state. The industrial policy built around them now has to show it can carry their products from the workshop to the market.