President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday said his administration’s goal of ensuring safety of lives and property as well as encouraging economic stability could best be achieved if the country embraced science and technology.

Buhari made the submission in his remarks at a meeting of the National Research and Innovation Council at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The President said he was convinced that Nigeria must accord priority to science and technology if it must take its rightful place among the leading economies in the world.

He said, “Nigeria’s vision of becoming one of the 20 largest economies in the world by the year 2020 is only attainable when science, technology and innovation are fully integrated into our national socio-economic development process. That process will now be fast-tracked with the coming on board of this council.

“I wish to assure this council of my determination and commitment to ensure that, as a nation, we will invest appropriately in science, technology and innovation in order to guarantee our competitiveness both continentally and globally.

“Our goal to secure our nation, grow our economy, create jobs and fight crime can best be achieved if we embrace science and technology.”

Buhari expressed the hope that the nation’s research and innovation output should be measured by number of intellectual property such as patents granted and not only by the number of articles published in scholarly journals.

By this action, he hoped that Nigeria would become a centre of discoveries, inventions and innovation in all fields of science and technology.

He also expressed the belief that before long, Nigeria should be in a position to produce Nobel laureates in the sciences.

The President explained that the NRIC would be geared towards coordinating and streamlining the nation’s research and development activities as well as fostering innovation.