Benefitting society through science fairs
To inspire the future generation of scientists, young students need to be shown that science is exciting and connected with science mentors for career guidance. To sustain the interests instilled in them, the passion for science in teachers needs to be reinvigorated. One way to do this would be by linking scientists to science teachers, who can periodically train them on experiments adoptable to their classroom.
The recent science festival was designed to achieve all these, thanks to a collaboration with Yobe State University and the Yobe State Government. Science teachers and students from 25 schools across the various local governments of the state were trained and participated in competitions respectively. Scientists from different parts of Nigeria were invited to showcase their research to the public.
The winning entry for science innovation competition in the festival was a brilliant project by GSS Gadaka, more like a mini Garden by the Bay of Singapore. In fact, the judges for the competition, including Professor Isa Hussaini, an international expert in Cancer research, Professor Anthony Ebeigbe, former President of the Physiological Society of Nigerian and Professor T. Jacks, the current President of the Anatomical Society of Nigeria, were amazed by all the entries, especially because they were made using locally available resource.
Their performance and what I saw during the festivals in Gombe and Yobe, is hugely reassuring of our potentials in science in Nigeria. We have students with innovative minds, capable of becoming the future generation of world-leading scientists; we need to support them.
Science fairs need to be more frequent, to enable students to interact and learn from scientists. In the UK, young students as young as 6 years attend science festivals to interact with scientists, making them develop a deep passion for science at a young age.
Our recent science festivals were in collaboration with Gombe and Yobe State Universities, and have previously collaborated with the University of Maiduguri to organise a practical workshop for teachers in Maiduguri. What would be ideal however is for these universities and others across the country to make these activities a tradition, not just for the sake of students or teachers but the public. Cultural and religious misconceptions are among the key factors that slow science progress in Africa. There are many misconceptions about diseases in our society. Many often think by being religious, one has to be anti-science. Unaware that several inventions and discoveries were made by scientists with religious affiliations. The famous Big Bang Theory was proposed by the Belgian Priest - Georges Lemaître. In the book of hadith, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) mentioned that “There is no disease that Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment.” This itself is a motivation for research into the treatment of diseases. University is the citadel of knowledge, and I am sure making science fair a tradition in universities would transform our societies and its attitudes towards science. Mahmoud Bukar Maina is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Serpell Laboratory, University of Sussex, UK