KEYWORDS Manufacturing; innovation; technological growth; economy ABSTRACT The nucleus of technological growth is innovation. With a population of over one hundred and fifty million people Nigeria is yet to experience any major technological breakthrough. Communities are undeveloped and the people lack self-esteem. Massive poverty and unemployment give rise to corruption and inefficiency in Nigeria. Since independence on 1st October 1960 industrialisation seems a mirage because the skills and ideas of the pre- colonial past were abandoned during colonisation by Britain and the advancement of western European ideas. These jettisoned native methods of production and procurement to meet basic human needs without deep-rooted replacements. Instead, a dependency nature on European manufactures was enthroned. Thus, individuals, bodies and groups to restructure the economy and transform the country into a self-producing society made some uni-directional efforts that were tailored after European growth patterns and have failed to reach the goal. A panacea for this failure is to identify where bottom dropped off technological innovations in the past with a hope of learning some lessons.