By our correspondent

The National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI) on Wednesday said it is pursuing over $600 million in proposed investments to boost Nigeria’s innovation and clean-energy sectors.

Director-General, Dr Kazeem Kolawole Raji, disclosed this at a press conference in Abuja, while presenting outcomes of the NextGen Innovation Challenge 2026 held in London.

The challenge, organised with UKALD, held its grand finale on October 9 at ExCeL London, bringing together Nigerian innovators, investors, diplomats and development partners.

Raji said 298 innovators from the 36 states and FCT participated, up from 105 in 2025, to showcase homegrown technologies to global markets.

Innovations covered AI, robotics, agriculture, healthcare, education, renewable energy, telecoms, enterprise software, 3D printing and advanced manufacturing.

He said NBTI’s next focus is turning ideas into viable businesses that create jobs and address national challenges.

The proposed $600million portfolio comprises a $500million solar programme with Gigawatt Global to build solar farms in universities and polytechnics under Power Purchase Agreements.

It also includes $100million financing for the Tinubu Light Initiative under an MoU between NBTI and Financial Innovation for Impact, UK.

Raji clarified the figures are proposed investments, not funds received, as realization depends on due diligence, approvals and financing agreements.

He said the investments could boost renewable infrastructure and electricity access in tertiary institutions while advancing clean-energy goals.

Raji also unveiled the Tinubu Light Initiative, targeting one million micro and small businesses with solar solutions to cut energy costs.

The programme projects 10,000 field marketers, 50,000 direct youth jobs, N30billion blended financing in phase one and N12billion annual economic benefits.

He said beneficiaries include tailors, barbers, pharmacies, restaurants, retailers, POS operators and women and youth-led businesses.

In a boost for women-led innovation, Dubai investor Erin Grover pledged $100,000 for three women innovators to improve access to finance and mentorship.

Raji added that 16 innovators got international accelerator slots worth $10,000 each and Pre-MBA scholarships worth over £5,000 each, plus UK Global Talent Visa support, urging investors to back Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem with transparent, verifiable implementation.

By Our Correspondent

Speaker of the House of Representatives Rt.Hon.Tajudeen Abbas has said that the nation’s health challenges cannot be solved without a coordinated approach by all relevant stakeholders.

This happened as the House Committee on Infectious Diseases has held a public hearing to amend the National Agency for the Control of HIV AIDS Act Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 with a view to establish a trust fund for the control of these ailments

Speaking when he declared the hearing open, he said that our nation cannot realize it’s full potentials when preventable and treatable diseases continue to deprive it’s citizens of life, productivity and opportunity.

Represented by Hon Mansur Manusoro, he said that the protection of public health must therefore be understood not simply as a government responsibility, but as an investment in the lives, capabilities and future of our people.

The proposed amendment he informed is to examine whether our existing legislative and institutional framework is sufficiently responsive to the scale and interconnected nature of these challenges.

He added that the proposal is seeking to expand the mandate of the National Agency for the Control of HIV and AIDS the Bill raises important questions about coordination, administrative efficiency, resource mobilisation and accountability.

He harped on the need to examine how better coordination can reduce duplication, strengthen collaboration and ensure more effective use of scarce public resourexes noting that HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria have distinct patterns of transmission, prevention strategies and treatment requirements.

The Speaker insisted that every proposed institutional change must ultimately be judged by its impact on the health and well-being of Nigerians.

Earlier in an opening speech Chairman of the House Committee Hon.Amobi Godwin Ogah said that said that the health of the citizenry is an important issue that is not supposed to be left to chance.

He noted that Nigeria remains the country with the highest burden of infected persons with HIV/AIDS Malaria and Tuberculosis diseases

He harped on the need for to establish a trust find to tackle the issue of delay in funding of relevant agencies on charge of control of these diseases annually.

He added that no legislation,
however well conceived, cannot succeed without effective implementation.

He added that sustained investment, public awareness,scientific innovation, institutional cooperation and community participation remain indispensable to the fight against infectious diseases.

The Abia born Labour Party lawmaker added that the proposed amendment must form part of a broader national commitment to strengthening our health system and ensuring that public health interventions produce lasting results.

By Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko

When Senator Osita Bonaventure Izunaso returned to the National Assembly in 2023, more than three years ago, he came back to a Senate very different from the one he had previously known.

Nigeria was confronting a worsening cost-of-living crisis. The naira was under pressure, and the foreign-exchange market was unsettled. Infrastructure deficits remained widespread, while the South-East was still struggling with insecurity, the sit-at-home order and the economic consequences of prolonged political tension.

For Izunaso, the challenge was particularly complicated.

He was not simply another senator in Abuja. He represented Imo West, a constituency spread across 12 local government areas and embedded in one of the country’s most politically restive regions.

Two years into the 10th National Assembly, his record has consequently developed along three parallel tracks: legislation and oversight in Abuja, constituency interventions in Imo West, and advocacy on issues that have come to define the political conversation in the South-East.

That combination provides a more revealing picture of his time in the Senate than a simple catalogue of projects.

Capital-market reform and legislative responsibility

One of the first tests of Izunaso’s second Senate career came not from his constituency but from Nigeria’s financial markets.

In August 2023, he became chairman of the Senate Committee on Capital Market and Institutions.

It was a consequential assignment.

The capital market is where government policy, private investment, pension funds, companies and individual investors meet. At a time when Nigeria was trying to attract investment while battling currency instability and declining purchasing power, the committee’s responsibilities extended beyond technical regulation.

Izunaso’s committee became involved in the legislative process that produced the Investments and Securities Bill 2024.

The bill sought to replace the 2007 legislation and update the legal framework governing Nigeria’s capital market. It addressed issues including investor protection, market regulation, market abuse and the powers of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Izunaso was identified as the main sponsor of the legislation and played a prominent role in its consideration by the Senate.

The bill eventually passed the Senate in December 2024.

That episode says something important about the senator’s present role. His influence in the National Assembly is not confined to bills bearing his name. Committee chairmanship gives a lawmaker considerable influence over what comes before the chamber, how legislation is scrutinised and how regulatory institutions are subjected to oversight.

It is an influence that is less visible than the commissioning of a road or the distribution of empowerment equipment, but potentially broader in its consequences.

When the naira became a Senate issue

Izunaso also turned his attention to the foreign-exchange crisis.

He sponsored a motion calling for an investigation into the accumulation of foreign-exchange backlogs, activities in the forex market and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s development-finance programmes dating back to 2015.

The motion came at a time when businesses and households were feeling the effects of exchange-rate volatility.

For a senator representing a district where trading, manufacturing and small businesses are important components of local economic life, the issue had both national and constituency dimensions.

His intervention reflected an emerging feature of his Senate work: taking issues that appear to belong to Abuja and connecting them to the economic realities of people back home.

Besides, Senator Izunaso was the sole representative of Nigeria at the Money/202/20 Middle East which took place from September 14-16, 2026 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention centre in Malham, Saudi Arabia. The event was hosted by the Financial Sector Development Programme (FSDP), Saudi Central Bank (SANA), Capital Market Authority (IA); co-organized by Tahaluf and Fintech Saudi. Money20/20 Middle East brings together banks, Fintech companies, investors regulators, technology providers and policy makers to explore the future of payments, banking, financial infrastructure and digital finance.

But Abuja is only half the story

For most constituents, however, parliamentary committee work can seem remote.

The test of representation is often much more immediate: the road that connects one community to another, the electricity project, the student who receives a scholarship, the young person who receives equipment to start a business, or the patient who receives treatment during a medical outreach.

This is where Izunaso’s constituency programme has attracted the greatest attention from his supporters.

His office lists road rehabilitation, electricity, water, healthcare, education, agriculture and youth empowerment among the interventions undertaken in Imo West.

It also reports skills-acquisition programmes in communities including Akokwa and Urualla.

The senator’s empowerment programmes have distributed equipment such as sewing machines, grinding machines, welding tools, barbing kits and other items intended to help beneficiaries establish businesses.

Motorcycles and vehicles have also been included among the items distributed.

The political photographs from such events are easy to find. The harder question is what happens after the cameras leave.

Does the sewing machine become a viable tailoring business? Does the welding equipment create employment? Does the motorcycle become a source of sustainable income?

Those are the questions that ultimately determine whether an empowerment programme becomes a development intervention or simply another political ceremony.

Izunaso’s published record presents the programmes as part of an effort to promote self-reliance.

Education and human-capital development

Education has provided another important strand of the senator’s constituency work.

At his July 2024 town-hall meeting, Izunaso presented a first-year scorecard and highlighted scholarship programmes, youth training, healthcare and infrastructure interventions.

The senator reported that 200 students had benefited from scholarships.

His supporters have also pointed to interventions through the Kpakpando Education Foundation, including educational assistance and support for schools.

For families confronting the rising cost of education, such interventions can be significant.

But, again, the larger measure of success is not the announcement of a scholarship. It is whether the beneficiary completes school, acquires useful skills and eventually enters productive employment.

That is the difference between measuring activity and measuring impact.

Representation in a troubled region

Perhaps the most politically consequential aspect of Izunaso’s Senate career has nothing to do with roads or scholarships.

It is his position on the South-East’s political crisis.

Soon after his return to the Senate, Izunaso sought a political solution to the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra.

His intervention was controversial because Kanu’s case sits at the intersection of separatist agitation, national security, criminal justice and the long-running political grievances of the South-East.

Izunaso argued that a political approach could help create conditions for peace and address the economic damage associated with the sit-at-home order.

The Senate did not adopt his proposal for Kanu’s release.

But the senator continued to raise the issue.

His argument has essentially been that military and security responses alone cannot resolve a problem with deep political roots.

That position places him in a delicate political space. He is a member of the governing APC, yet he has advocated an approach to one of the South-East’s most contentious issues that has not always aligned with the harder security position of the Federal Government.

For constituents in Imo West, however, the issue is not theoretical.

The sit-at-home order has affected transport, commerce, schools and daily economic activity across the region. Any political or security intervention capable of restoring normal economic life therefore has direct consequences for the people Izunaso represents.

The Anim State question

Izunaso has also chosen to put his political weight behind the demand for another state in the South-East.

He has promoted the proposed Anim State, arguing that the creation of an additional state could improve political representation and development in the region.

The proposal has particular relevance to his political base because it involves areas around Imo West and neighbouring Anambra.

But state creation is one of the most difficult constitutional exercises in Nigeria.

It requires more than political enthusiasm. It requires the fulfilment of constitutional procedures and demonstrable support among affected communities.

Izunaso has nevertheless continued to push the proposal, making it part of his broader argument that the South-East requires greater political and developmental balance.

His support for the South-East Development Commission follows the same regional-development logic.

Together, the two issues show that his Senate agenda has increasingly moved beyond the boundaries of Imo West.

From intervention to impact

There is another way to look at Izunaso’s constituency interventions.

They represent an attempt to translate the abstract language of government policy into individual economic opportunities.

A road is infrastructure.

A scholarship is human capital.

A skills-acquisition programme is an employment intervention.

A medical outreach is social protection.

An empowerment tool is an attempt at livelihood creation.

That is the theory behind the model.

Whether the model works at scale is a separate question.

Izunaso’s official project platform reports interventions across all 12 local government areas of Imo West, while his supporters have cited hundreds of beneficiaries from empowerment programmes and thousands of persons living with disabilities who have received assistance.

Those figures are claims from his office and supporters and should be independently tested against project records, beneficiary accounts and evidence of completion.

That scrutiny is not a rejection of the interventions. It is precisely what political accountability requires.

Measuring legislative performance

There is a tendency in Nigerian politics to reduce legislative performance to numbers: how many bills were sponsored, how many motions were moved and how many projects were facilitated.

The numbers matter, but they do not tell the whole story.

A senator’s job involves legislation, representation, oversight and advocacy.

Izunaso’s first years in the 10th Assembly illustrate all four.

He has participated in financial-sector legislation as chairman of the Capital Market and Institutions Committee. He has raised questions about foreign-exchange management. He has sponsored legislative proposals dealing with infrastructure and fire prevention.

At home, his office has pursued education, healthcare, empowerment and infrastructure interventions.

And on the regional stage, he has continued to speak about Nnamdi Kanu, insecurity, state creation and the South-East Development Commission.

The record is therefore neither simply an Abuja story nor simply an Imo West story.

It is a story about a politician trying to operate in both worlds simultaneously.

The unfinished test

There is, however, a larger test ahead.

The 10th National Assembly still has time to determine the final shape of Izunaso’s legislative record.

Some bills associated with him and his committee have become law or advanced through the legislative process. Others remain proposals.

Some constituency interventions have been completed, while others require continuing assessment.

And some of the biggest issues he has championed—particularly state creation and the political resolution of the South-East crisis—remain far from settled.

That makes his first two years a chapter rather than a conclusion.

The senator has established the themes of his current representation: capital-market reform in Abuja, development interventions in Imo West and political advocacy for the South-East.

The more difficult part is converting those activities into durable outcomes.

For a lawmaker, that is ultimately where the difference between activity and impact lies.

A bill becomes meaningful when it changes the law and improves regulation.

A road becomes meaningful when it remains usable.

A scholarship becomes meaningful when it helps a student complete an education.

An empowerment programme becomes meaningful when the business survives.

And political advocacy becomes meaningful when it produces measurable change in the lives of the people affected.

That is the unfinished test of Osita Izunaso’s second journey through the National Assembly.

So far, his Senate career has been defined by an effort to occupy all three spaces available to a modern Nigerian lawmaker: the legislative floor in Abuja, the constituency at home and the wider political arena of the South-East.

What remains is for time and evidence to determine how deeply that effort has changed each of them.

EMMANUEL NNADOZIE ONWUBIKO is the founder of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria and a former National Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria.