Data Will Drive Nigeria’s Next Prosperity – Chidoka

Former minister of aviation and chancellor of the Athena Centre, Chief Osita Chidoka, has said Nigeria’s future prosperity would be shaped by knowledge and data.

He said the era of crude oil as the source of Nigeria’s prosperity was fast ending,

Chidoka spoke while delivering the keynote address at the 3rd International Hybrid Conference and Annual Lecture of the Faculty of Physical Sciences, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK), Awka, titled; “From Resources to Prosperity: The Role of the Physical Sciences in Managing Nigeria’s Future.”

According to a statement from his media aide, Ikechukwu Okafor, the former minister stated that data had overtaken crude oil as the world’s most valuable asset, noting that societies that invest in scientific thinking now shape global innovation and economic power.

Drawing from his experience transforming the Federal Road Safety Corps into a data-driven organisation, Chidoka said nations fail not because they lack resources but because “they do not measure, monitor, and manage those resources scientifically. Without data, abundance becomes chaos.”

He warned that as the world enters the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Nigeria must understand the march of history: every epoch of human progress—from the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution, through the Internet Age—was driven by science, and those who failed to adapt were left behind.

“This is the Age of Intelligence—an era where algorithms, not pipelines, will determine prosperity,” he said.

Chidoka positioned universities as the frontline institutions that will determine Africa’s place in this new age. He commended UNIZIK’s Faculty of Physical Sciences for advancing scientific education in the Southeast and described its Science Village project as a strategic platform for converting research into real industrial value.

He called for a national shift from resource dependence to a culture of scientific discipline anchored on M²I — measure, monitor, improve, insisting that only data-driven governance can convert Nigeria’s potential into progress.

“The world no longer rewards nations for what lies beneath their soil, but for what lies between their ears,” he declared.

“Our future will not be imported; it will be invented.”