ABUJA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Nigerian government on Tuesday said its focus is mainly on young people to help actualize the country's science, technology, and innovation goals.

Minister of Science and Technology Ogbonnaya Onu, while welcoming a Nigerian whizzkid, Odedairo Oluwaferanmi Ayodele who won the gold medal at the World Mathematics Championship held in Thailand recently, noted young citizens have greater potentials to take every country forward.

"We have to place a lot of emphasis on our young people because they make up a large percentage of our population," Onu said.

"We have to facilitate them to help the nation in the direction of science and technology so that many of the things we now import into the country, we will no longer be doing so but we will have the science and technology to convert our own locally available raw materials into the products that we currently bring in," he said.

He said the government would launch a campaign across all public schools to prepare young students for the task of building a technologically innovative country.

This, he said, will bolster the government's effort of making Nigeria the technology hub in Africa.

Noting there's hardly any mineral resources that cannot be found in Nigeria, Onu said the future of the country depends mostly on the young people who can utilize science and technology to move the economy forward.

The 15-year-old Odedairo was celebrated in Abuja with 14 others for receiving laurels for outstanding performances at various global competitions.

Nigeria has received at least 300 medals from mostly global science and mathematics competition since last year, according to government data.