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The National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) has awarded ₦162.5 million in development grants and cash prizes to six public servants whose innovations are addressing critical challenges in security, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, digital commerce, renewable energy and agricultural processing.
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The awards, presented to the winners by NASENI Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Khalil Suleiman Halilu, were formally received by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator George Akume, in Abuja.
The maiden NASENI Innovation Assessment and Awards (NIAA) is emerging as part of a broader effort to transform Nigeria’s approach to industrial development—by identifying innovations within the public sector, funding their development and creating pathways for their commercialisation.
Organised under the theme, “Driving Innovation, Accelerating Industrialization, Transforming Nigeria,” the initiative awarded ₦140 million in development grants to three winning inter-agency projects and ₦22.5 million in cash prizes to three leading intra-agency innovations.
More significantly, the initiative seeks to address one of Nigeria’s longstanding industrialisation challenges: the gap between research, invention and commercially viable production.
From Government Laboratories to Industrial Production
For Halilu, the significance of the awards goes beyond recognising individual innovators.
He said the rapid expansion of NASENI’s industrial and commercialisation activities—including more than 20 factories being facilitated and over 40 indigenous products developed—has been driven substantially by public servants working behind the scenes.
“We realised that civil servants have been the ones behind this very amazing growth,” Halilu stated.
He added that NASENI had therefore decided to dedicate resources to innovators within the public service whose work could contribute to Nigeria’s technological and industrial development.
“That is why we dedicated funds and resources specifically for these innovators who are working hard in public service.”
The strategy is anchored on NASENI’s Creation, Collaboration and Commercialisation (3Cs) framework, which seeks to move technological ideas beyond research environments and into practical, market-ready products.
That transition is crucial to Nigeria’s industrialisation ambitions. An innovation that remains inside a laboratory may demonstrate technical promise, but its wider economic value emerges when it can be manufactured, commercialised, adopted by industry, generate jobs and reduce dependence on imported technologies and inputs.
Innovation Awards Target Critical Industrial Gaps
The six winning projects collectively demonstrate how home-grown innovation can be applied to some of Nigeria’s most pressing economic and social challenges.
The inter-agency winners were drawn from the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), Nigerian Institute of Leather Science and Technology (NILEST), and National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD).
Their projects span national security, local manufacturing inputs and pharmaceutical production—three areas with significant implications for economic resilience and industrial self-reliance.
₦70m Grant for Tactical Security Technology
First place in the inter-agency category went to Idowu Ajigbon and his team from NASRDA, who received a ₦70 million development grant for their Tactical Deep Surveillance Wearable Jacket.
The smart security jacket is designed to improve real-time situational awareness, personnel safety and tactical communication for security agencies.
Beyond its security application, the project illustrates the potential for Nigerian research institutions to develop specialised technologies for domestic requirements rather than relying exclusively on imported systems.
₦40m Grant to Localise Leather-Tanning Inputs
Second place, with a ₦40 million grant, went to Temitope Badmus and his team from NILEST, Zaria, for the Extraction and Development of NILEST-TAN for Leather Industries.
The innovation focuses on local production of leather-tanning chemicals, with the potential to lower production costs and strengthen domestic value addition within the leather industry.
This has wider industrial implications because developing local inputs can help Nigerian manufacturers reduce exposure to foreign exchange volatility, imported raw materials and international supply-chain disruptions.
₦30m Grant to Convert Agricultural Waste into Pharmaceuticals
Third place went to Isaac Johnson Ajeh and his team from NIPRD, Abuja, who received a ₦30 million grant for their project, “Valorisation of Plantain Peel Waste: Development and Standardisation of High-Potency Vitamin C.”
The project seeks to convert agricultural waste into pharmaceutical raw materials.
The innovation reflects a potentially important dimension of industrialisation: transforming materials traditionally regarded as waste into higher-value industrial inputs, while connecting agriculture to pharmaceutical manufacturing and creating additional economic value from Nigeria’s agricultural resources.
NASENI’s Internal Innovations Target the Market
The three leading intra-agency innovations were similarly focused on converting technology into products and services with practical economic applications.
They received a combined ₦22.5 million in cash prizes.
NASENI MART: Taking Made-in-Nigeria Products Online
First place went to Yusuf Usman of NASENI Headquarters, who received ₦12.5 million for NASENI MART, a multilingual digital e-commerce platform designed to connect consumers directly with Made-in-Nigeria engineering products.
The platform represents an attempt to address another important barrier to industrialisation: market access.
Producing a locally developed product is only one part of the industrial value chain. Connecting that product to consumers, distributors and markets is equally critical to creating sustainable enterprises.
Solar Cooking Station Targets Energy Costs
Second place went to Benjamin Nweke of NASENI ELDI-Awka, who received ₦7 million for the construction of a solar-powered standalone cooking station for food-vendor empowerment.
The project seeks to provide food vendors with clean, affordable and reliable cooking energy, demonstrating how renewable energy technologies can be applied to everyday economic activity and small-business operations.
Solar Cassava Dryer Targets Post-Harvest Losses
Third place went to Engr. Mikairu Aminu Abu of NASENI NSEL-Karshi, who received ₦3 million for the design and development of an off-grid solar-powered cassava dryer.
The technology is aimed at improving post-harvest preservation and strengthening rural farm incomes.
Its significance lies in connecting renewable energy with agricultural processing—an area where technology can help extend product shelf life, reduce losses and increase the value captured by farmers.
261 Entries Tested NASENI’s Innovation Pipeline
The awards were preceded by a competitive assessment process designed to identify innovations with technical and commercial potential.
Chairman of the Innovation Awards Committee and NASENI Director of Manufacturing Services, Dr Olayode A. Olasupo, disclosed that 678 users registered on the online submission portal developed by NASENI’s ICT team.
A total of 261 complete submissions emerged, comprising 180 intra-agency and 81 inter-agency entries.
The submissions covered engineering design, software development, renewable energy, healthcare, agriculture and other areas with potential for technological and industrial application.
The assessment began with a two-stage preliminary screening using specialised computer algorithms for compliance review.
This was followed by expert technical evaluation that produced 20 finalists—10 from each category—who subsequently defended their projects through physical pitching at NASENI Headquarters.
An independent panel of assessors drawn from industry and academia evaluated the finalists’ technical and commercial propositions, a process designed to strengthen transparency, fairness and credibility.
The Bigger Industrialisation Question
The NIAA comes against the backdrop of a fundamental challenge facing Nigeria’s industrialisation drive: how to convert the country’s considerable pool of scientific knowledge, engineering expertise and entrepreneurial creativity into productive economic capacity.
For years, Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem has generated research findings, prototypes and promising technologies. The more difficult task has often been taking those inventions through product development, financing, manufacturing, market validation and commercial scale.
NASENI’s approach seeks to tackle this gap by placing commercialisation alongside creation and collaboration.
The six winning projects illustrate what that could mean in practice—from producing local industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical inputs to developing security technologies, digital marketplaces, clean-energy systems and agricultural processing equipment.
If scaled successfully, such innovations could contribute to local value chains while creating opportunities for skilled employment, enterprise development and technology transfer.
SGF Pledges Federal Government Support
Receiving the innovators, SGF George Akume commended NASENI for the initiative and its transparent evaluation process.
He also praised the ingenuity demonstrated by the public servants and assured NASENI of the Federal Government’s support to ensure that the innovations receive the backing required to contribute to Nigeria’s industrial transformation.
The assurance is important because the transition from prototype to industrial product typically requires more than an award or development grant. It requires sustained financing, technical support, manufacturing capacity, market access, regulatory pathways and institutional partnerships.
NASENI Innovation Hub to Connect Ideas with Investors
The next phase of the initiative will therefore be critical.
Head of the NASENI Innovation Hub, Mrs Busola Perez-Folayan, said the Hub would provide the winners with tailored incubation support, business development assistance and investor-matching opportunities.
The objective is to help move the winning ideas from promising innovations to scalable commercial products.
This creates a potentially important bridge between Nigeria’s research ecosystem and its industrial economy.
Rather than measuring innovation only by the number of patents, research papers or prototypes produced, the commercialisation model seeks to measure success by what ultimately reaches the market, what can be manufactured locally, what businesses can adopt and what economic value can be generated.
Turning Innovation into Industrial Capacity
The real significance of the NASENI Innovation Assessment and Awards will ultimately be determined by what happens after the ceremony.
The ₦162.5 million commitment provides an initial platform for six technologies, but the larger opportunity lies in establishing a repeatable pipeline through which Nigerian inventions can be identified, financed, incubated, manufactured and commercialised.
For a country seeking to deepen industrialisation, that pipeline matters.
Nigeria’s transition from a largely consumption-driven economy to one with stronger domestic productive capacity will require more than infrastructure and investment. It will require a sustained ability to create technologies, manufacture products, develop local inputs and build businesses around Nigerian intellectual and engineering capabilities.
By putting public-sector innovators at the centre of this process, NASENI is attempting to demonstrate that Nigeria’s industrialisation challenge is not simply about importing technology faster—it is about building the capacity to invent, produce, commercialise and compete.
The NIAA could therefore become more than an innovation award. Properly sustained, it could evolve into an important institutional mechanism for turning Nigeria’s home-grown technological creativity into industrial capacity and, ultimately, economic transformation.
