NNPC seeks NITDA’s support to digitize processes

The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has on Friday solicited the support of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) on how to use digital technology, research, and innovation to drive the petroleum sector.

This was disclosed when the Director General of NITDA, Mallam Kashifu Abdullahi received the Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI) division of the NNPC), led by the Chief Innovation Officer of NNPC, Mrs Ugonna Betty Amaechi, at the National Centre fot Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

Mrs Amaechi said the seeks NITDA’s assistance in reviewing some of its strategy, goals, priorities and progress, as well as provide guidance and enablement to succeed in the area of effectively making use of digital technology to achieve its objectives.

She said: “innovation is about creating new ways of doing things towards achieving performance efficiency and cost cutting. Innovation is something Nigeria has come to embrace and for innovation to thrive there must be triggers which is why the RTI was formed.”

Amaechi revealed that RTI’s business thematic areas includes; cybernetics and automation, downstream innovation, energy innovation, refining of petrochemical innovation, upstream innovation, and market research and service innovation.

She stated that the research aspects of RTI uses a creative, systemic and methodological principles of knowledge to collect, organise and analyse ideas for business growth, sustain development and then solve problems within NNPC.

She said it hopes to learn from NITDA’s wealth of experience adding that its focus is in the area of technology to drive business efficiency, quality service and performance excellence, using advancements in applied sciences, engineering and design in line with technology trends.

In the area of innovation, the team leader said, “RTI came up with the idea of looking at it more centrally from a human-centred approach. She mentioned that RTI intends to embrace human centred innovation.”
In his remark, the NITDA boss, said: “to have a successful innovation ecosystem, it is important to have five key stakeholders which are; Academia, corporate organisation, entrepreneur, and a venture capital, in order to provide funding for the ideas.”

While assuring the RTI of his Agency’s supports to drive various initiatives, Mallam Kashifu maintained that, “getting an idea from conceptualisation to impact is highly required to be an innovator that opens to new ideas.”

The Research, Technology and Innovation division was created in March 2020 to handle research technology and innovation for the NNPC.