By Christy Dada

Federal Government through National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP), said over N192 billion has been saved from capital flight.

This was disclosed by the Director-General of NOTAP, Dr Danazumi Ibrahim during a briefing in Lagos.

According to him, the saving was between 2010 and 2016. And this was achieved through NOTAP’s refusal to approve the importation of technologies and services that could be rendered by Nigerians.

“if not for NOTAP’s intervention, the money would have left the country as capital flight .NOTAP’s mission is to ensure a concerted development of indigenous technological capacity, through a proactive commercialisation and promotion of locally motivated technologies”.

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The director-general said that about 90 per cent of technologies used in Nigeria were still being imported. But was quick to point that the situation was improving, as NOTAP had secured about 38 patents for agencies and private researchers in the first half of 2017.

He also disclosed that Notap has introduced local vendor policy to assist in development of local content initiative of the federal government.

“Most of the technology transfer agreement handled by Notap are mainly on software licensing with a huge sum of money being paid to foreign software owners.

“In order to encourage local software development, Notap introduced a policy that allows 40 per cent of the annual maintenance fee goes to the local vendor working with the company and this has improved software development in Nigeria”.