Last week, writing about Niprisan, I argued that knowledge is not power until you own it. It was deliberately provocative, but the point was not that knowledge possesses no intrinsic value unless somebody puts a price tag on it. Knowledge can liberate, heal, illuminate and transform society long before it generates a penny. My concern was narrower: when knowledge produces economic and technological value, who possesses the institutions capable of protecting, financing, scaling and capturing that value?
A conversation I had earlier this month made that question even more uncomfortable.
The Academy for Transformative Leadership held its annual conference on 5 and 6 September. During the conference, I spoke with Professor Amos Fatokun, Professor of Pharmacology and Neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores University. Our conversation turned to patents, research commercialisation and the practical difficulties confronting academics who produce potentially valuable knowledge.
Professor Fatokun recounted his experience of collaborative research involving a colleague at a prominent Nigerian university. The work generated an invention worthy of patent protection. That should have been the beginning of an exciting institutional journey.
Instead, an elementary problem arose.
Who would pay for the patent?
According to Professor Fatokun, the Nigerian university involved was not prepared at the time to meet the cost. Liverpool John Moores University was. Because the research involved Nigerian collaborators and significant intellectual contribution from Nigeria, he pressed for the Nigerian university to be recognised alongside the British institution in the ownership arrangements.
Think about what that episode represents.
The problem was not the absence of Nigerian brains.
It was not the absence of research.
It was not even the absence of something sufficiently original to warrant intellectual property protection.
The weakness appeared at the point where knowledge needed an institution to stand behind it.
This is where last week’s argument about Niprisan needs a sequel. Telling African researchers to own what they know is not enough. Ownership itself requires infrastructure.
A patent is not obtained through patriotic enthusiasm. Someone must assess whether an invention is patentable, determine where protection should be sought, prepare the application, pay filing and legal costs, manage the process across jurisdictions and decide whether continued protection remains commercially worthwhile. Then comes the harder journey of finding investors, licensees, manufacturers or customers.
How many Nigerian academics are trained to navigate that process?
More importantly, why should they have to navigate it alone?
Universities in advanced innovation systems do not generally expect the scientist who discovers something to become, overnight, a patent lawyer, technology-transfer specialist, venture capitalist, licensing negotiator and marketing executive. They build institutions around the researcher.
That institutional architecture is what Nigeria still needs to deepen.
It would be inaccurate to say that nothing exists. The National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion, NOTAP, has for years promoted Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Offices in universities and research institutions. A number of Nigerian universities now publicly describe structures for intellectual property development and commercialisation, including support for patents, licensing and spin-outs.
This is progress.
But an office is not an ecosystem.
Putting ‘technology transfer’ on a door is the easy part. The real test is whether the office has the competence, industry relationships and resources to move discoveries from laboratory benches into productive use.
Can it pay for promising patents?
Can it assess commercial potential?
Can it fund proof-of-concept work?
Can it connect a researcher with a pharmaceutical manufacturer, software company or engineering firm?
Can it negotiate licensing terms?
Can it help establish a spin-out?
Can it introduce researchers to investors?
Can it remain involved during the difficult years between invention and revenue?
Those questions matter because research commercialisation is not an event. It is a chain. And a chain is only as useful as its weakest link.
Nigeria has become reasonably adept at celebrating the beginning of that chain. Universities announce grants. Academics publish papers. Researchers receive awards. Government officials commission laboratories. Conferences produce communiqués.
Then comes the dangerous middle.
This is the space innovation scholars often call the valley of death: the ravine between a promising idea and a viable product, where many inventions disappear because no bridge has been built across. The research may work. The prototype may exist. The patent may even have been filed. But without patient capital, regulatory support, product development, market testing and industrial partners, the idea dies within sight of the marketplace.
It is encouraging that Nigerian policymakers increasingly recognise the problem. NOTAP’s mandate explicitly includes commercialisation of research and development results and promotion of locally generated technologies. Recent initiatives have also focused on strengthening links between universities, research institutions and industry.
But recognition is only the beginning.
Universities need properly funded commercialisation structures with professional staff whose careers are built around moving research towards impact. There should be dedicated budgets for patent applications and proof-of-concept development. Researchers should know exactly where to go when they believe they have created something commercially valuable.
And government must go beyond funding research.
It must become a strategic customer of Nigerian innovation.
This is where public procurement enters the conversation.
Nigeria is a huge market. Federal and state governments collectively spend enormous sums purchasing medicines, educational materials, agricultural inputs, software, vehicles, energy systems, construction materials and countless other goods and services.
Yet too often, public procurement simply transfers Nigerian purchasing power into demand for products designed and manufactured elsewhere.
What if some of that purchasing power were deliberately used to create first markets for credible Nigerian innovations?
Suppose a Nigerian university develops a diagnostic technology that meets rigorous standards. Why should government procurement systems not help provide the first significant market?
Suppose researchers develop an agricultural technology demonstrably capable of improving yields. Why should public agricultural programmes not become potential early adopters?
Suppose Nigerian engineers create a technology suitable for public infrastructure. Why should procurement rules not contain carefully designed pathways through which indigenous innovation can compete?
This is not an argument for buying inferior products because they carry a Nigerian label.
Patriotism is not quality control.
Products must satisfy safety, performance and value-for-money standards. Competition matters. Independent testing matters. Transparency matters, particularly in a procurement environment where political patronage can easily masquerade as industrial policy.
But there is nothing economically neutral about a government spending billions importing technologies while laboratories within its own country struggle to find their first customer.
Public procurement can be more than administrative purchasing. Used intelligently, it becomes industrial policy.
Nigeria already possesses the beginnings of such a framework. Executive Order 5, introduced in 2018, explicitly sought to promote Nigerian content in contracts and the use of science, engineering and technology to deepen domestic capability. The challenge, as so often happens in Nigeria, is converting policy aspiration into disciplined institutional practice.
The same applies to private capital.
Banks, pension funds, wealthy individuals and large corporations must begin to see knowledge-based enterprise as worthy of patient investment. Not every invention will succeed. Most will not. Innovation is inherently risky. But countries do not build technological capability by eliminating risk. They build institutions capable of carrying it.
Universities must change too.
For too long, the academic reward system has treated publication as the natural finishing line of research. Publish the paper. Add it to the promotion file. Count the citations. Move to the next project.
But for some forms of research, publication should be the beginning of another journey.
What can this knowledge do?
Who can use it?
Should it be protected?
Can it become a product?
Can it become a company?
Can it solve a public problem?
Can it create employment?
Can Nigeria build an industry around it?
These are not vulgar questions contaminating the purity of scholarship. They are questions about impact.
Professor Fatokun’s story is therefore not really a story about the price of filing a patent. It is about something much larger: whether the Nigerian university system has built enough institutional muscle to stand behind the knowledge produced by its own scholars.
Last week, I argued that knowledge is not power until you own it.
There is now an important addition. You cannot meaningfully own knowledge if you have not built institutions prepared to protect it, finance it, connect it to industry and create markets in which it can live.
The laboratory produces the idea.
But only an ecosystem turns the idea into power.