ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates the problematic and dialectics of technology transfer. It discusses the evolution of the official Nigerian policy of technology transfer. The chapter examines the import substitution industrialization strategy and the establishment of joint industrial projects between Nigerian government and foreign Trans-National Corporations, as well as the attempts at developing capital goods industry through the development of the iron and steel industry, as ways of ensuring technology transfer. It highlights the role that the indigenous technological base should play in the industrial development of Nigeria. The National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) was established in 1977 to promote science and technology research and oversee the process of technology transfer. In 1979, a separate federal Ministry of Science and Technology was created to replace the NSTDA. It is clear that the Nigerian government's policy of technology transfer was anchored on the modernist notion of the backwardness, irrelevance and, indeed, absence of any worthwhile indigenous technology.
