Nigerian Academy of Engineering (NAE), the highest professional body of engineering in the country hasurged the presidNigeria’sent-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to deploy engineering and technology to drive economic development .
The president of the academy, Professor Peter Onwualu, who stated this when he set agenda for the in-coming administration at an interactive session with journalists in Lagos, stressed the need to do things differently to revamp the economy.
Onwualu flanked by senior engineers such as Professor Rahamon Bello, Professor Ayodele Ogunye, Professor John Adeaga, Professor John Ajayi, Prof Oluwafemi Taiwo, Engr Kadiri Adeola who is the technical secretary of the academy, said NAE is ready to work with the incoming government through relevant advice in all sectors of the economy.
He said, “The incoming administration needs to do so many things differently, especially using engineering and technology to drive economic development. Without application of engineering and technology there is no way we can make progress in the country, this will happen in different sectors.
“First of all we talk about capacity building, making sure we train the right type of engineers to drive economic development. In the areas of manufacturing, communication, agriculture , minerals development , transport system , aviation, smart systems that are now driving economies of countries. If Africa, Nigeria is going to compete under free trade, we need to have Nigerians producing high quality goods and this can only be done if we have engineers that are empower to do these things.’’
In the educational sector of engineering, he added that,’’ We know over the years we have not been getting it right, few months ago during the political campaigns the academy came up with a forum where we hosted the various political parties from different sectors of the economy, we actually had a written document presented to them on the way forward for Nigeria I believe we are already distributing these documents and we will continue to distribute them.’’
Onwualu lamented that the education sector had suffered a lot of problems, saying the incoming administration must be able to train the kind of engineers that the country requires, to drive infrastructure in this country.
‘’The government must find a way to end the disruptions we have in the system. Whether it comes in the form of strikes, shutting down the universities, this need so that the students will have a seamless and uninterrupted system. Coming to the engineering profession, we know that our laboratories and workshops in higher institutions, the engineering workshops were built about twenty, thirty years ago.
