In a powerful testament to grassroots innovation, a leading technology executive has publicly praised the intellectual capabilities of students from a foundation in Nigeria’s North-East, highlighting their work on high-tech patents as a critical step toward national digital sovereignty.
Dr. Kyari Bukar, Managing Director and CEO of Inlaks Ltd., made these remarks during a live mentoring session at an innovation showcase hosted by the Future Prowess Foundation in Maiduguri. He expressed profound optimism about the students’ potential to forge Nigeria’s path into a self-reliant digital future. “What I have seen here today is not just teaching, but a culture of building and problem-solving,” Bukar stated. “These students are rethinking existing challenges and developing first-generation products. This is the mindset required for digital sovereignty—the ability to create, own, and control the technologies that will shape our economy and society.”
Bukar’s comments underscore a significant shift: innovation emerging from regions often highlighted for humanitarian challenges. The Future Prowess Foundation, founded by lawyer Zannah Mustapha in the context of the North-East crisis, is deliberately pivoting its youth from vulnerability to technological leadership. Mustapha explained that the showcase aimed to demonstrate how supported youth are “rewriting their futures” through technology and entrepreneurship. The foundation is now actively seeking investment partners to transition student ideas from academic concepts into scalable, real-world solutions.
The student inventions presented provide concrete examples of this applied brainpower. They included a discrete camera chip embedded within a cap to capture social interactions—a concept with potential applications in assistive technology or secure recording—and a rapid-response fire detection device. Such inventions move beyond theoretical learning to address tangible, often local, problems with technology.
However, Dr. Bukar issued a crucial caveat alongside his praise. He emphasized an urgent, systemic need: the comprehensive updating of national educational curricula. “The curriculum of yesterday cannot build a future,” he insisted. “You cannot drive the next wave of technological change with old methods. The curriculum must be customized to equip students with the skills to meet global demands.” This critique points to a gap between isolated centers of excellence, like this foundation, and the broader education system. For Nigeria to achieve true digital sovereignty, Bukar implies, such innovative, project-based, and problem-solving pedagogy must become the norm, not the exception.
The implications are vast. The event in Maiduguri is more than a local showcase; it is a microcosm of a larger potential. It demonstrates that with the right support—mentorship from industry leaders like Bukar, a curriculum focused on creation rather than rote learning, and pathways to investment—young Nigerians anywhere can become architects of the country’s technological future. The brainpower being lauded is the nation’s most valuable patent. The challenge, as outlined by both the tech executive and the foundation founder, is to systematically nurture and scale this potential from the classroom to the global marketplace.
Reported by Hamza Suleiman for NAN.
