The Director, WIPO Nigeria, Olwatobiloba Moody, made this known to journalists at the Intellectual Property Programme in partnership with the National Youths Service Corps and managed by Hutzpa Consulting and Innovation Lab in Abuja.
Moody noted that Nigeria was losing financially because of its inability to capture intellectual property, hence the need to train youths especially corps members in IP in the FCT to help boost the country’s economy.
He said “Nigeria is losing because there is a huge creation of wealth in the space of intangible assets which the country is not fully tapping into. This is because we are not capturing this wealth through intellectual property such as the value of patents, copyrights, etc.
“The value of intellectual property is constantly on the rise. Globally in 2021, the estimated value of intangible assets was worth 73 trillion dollars and, I do not think we are capturing one per cent yet we are contributing majorly to the trillions and we are losing a lot of money.
“We are happy to be able to pilot this programme with corps members. As an organization, we are very keen to work with young people and we design different programmes to target various sectors in the society in building awareness and capacity in intellectual property.”
The National Coordinator of the pilot programme, IP Skills, Acquisition, Learning, And Youth Entrepreneurship, Obichi Obiajunwa, said about 50 corps members in the FCT will be trained within three to four months in IP to enable them to identify challenges and create innovations using technological solutions.
Obiajunwa stated, “The corps members are the participants in this programme. About 50 of them would be trained between three and four months. We are going to get them exposed to the environment where they have been posted to enable them to create innovations to tackle challenges using technological solutions.
“At the end of the programme, it is hoped that they will create start-ups, businesses, and innovation-driven enterprises.
“We will be engaging stakeholders and bringing in investors to make this work. The NYSC members would be exposed to investors following their creation of technologies. We will guide and mentor them through this process.
“For the pilot phase, we are rooting it to corps members in Abuja and by next year, we will scale it up to other states.”
