Introduction

This chapter examines the state of science communication in Nigeria and offers perspectives on the development of an inclusive, homegrown science communication agenda. Critical points in the development of the science, technology, and innovation (STI) agenda in Nigeria and, indeed, Africa, correspond to the occurrence of major shifts in history. In pre-colonial times, each society had its own ways of disseminating its ideas of science, which ensured that scientific practices were handed down from one generation to another. In the colonial period, science education was like every other form of education that was nascent at the time: it had as one of its goals the creation of a Western-educated class of people who could function within the colonial system. The wave of pan-Africanism that swept through the continent in the period leading to independence and the period immediately after it inspired a new wave of Afrocentric policies that seemed set to put science and, by extension, science communication, on a transformative path unencumbered by the age-long tendency to refract African scientific endeavour through European lenses.

Over time, however, the challenges of delivering on these laudable visions of an African-led science education, knowledge production, and science communication agenda in former colonies such as Nigeria have become glaring in the face of the legacy and sustained hegemony of dominant Eurocentric systems of knowledge production, validation, and communication (see Alatas, 2006; Asante, 2011; Aman, 2018; R’boul, 2021). This chapter provides an overview of past and present developments on the Nigerian science communication scene against the background of these longstanding challenges. Further, the chapter highlights opportunities for deepening inclusion and relevance towards the goal of building a transformative national science communication agenda for the future.

Rhetoric versus reality: science communication in Nigeria's STI policy and National Innovation System

The first thing a casual observer might notice about the popular narrative around science communication in Nigeria is that it is framed as being indispensable to achieving the goal of national development. By many local accounts, the advancement of science and the public's embrace of its achievements are all-important for unlocking the potential for broad-based innovation and wealth that lie dormant and largely untapped – a far cry from the unidirectional focus on oil that the country has exhibited since 1960.