Ugo Aliogo
In a bid to proffer solution to the unemployment challenges in the country, a Senior Lecturer, Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, University of Ibadan, Prof. Victor Oladokun, has stated that the country needs to adopt an engineering growth model.
Oladokun stated this recently in Lagos, during the inauguration of the 14th Chairman, Ikeja Branch, Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) with theme: ‘Engineering Development: The Catalyst for National Development.’
Oladokun said history has revealed that viable economic growth model could be achieved through industrialisation which he stated was a product of technologies, “and application of technological breakthroughs only made by engineering development.”
He further explained that the current economic challenges hold huge opportunities for technicians, technologists, and engineers in the engineering family to showcase their relevance.
In his inaugural speech, the NSE Ikeja Branch Chairman, Engr. Tosin Ogunmola, said the mandate for the new exco was to empower engineers by creating the branch as a value centre for the professional development of members.
He also said the exco would take engineering further by building the branch as an influential corporate citizen in the Lagos State that takes the lead in championing a state-wide engineering development drive.
Ogunmola further said the branch would embark on setting up state-of-the-art research and development centre planned as an incubation facility within the NSE Ikeja engineering resources centre.
He said the centre would be a place where resources are pooled together in collaboration with members of the Network of Partners (NoP) to transform students, graduates and corporate members’ innovation projects into commercially-viable projects by way of technological adoption.
The Ikeja Branch Chairman added that there would be a customised platform designed as an online portal hosted on the branch’s website to project the profiles of members for employment, contract and consultancy jobs backed, “with a PDU-based webinar framework to qualify members’ profile for verification on the portal and thereby enhance their chances with employers and contract-awarding companies.”
Continuing, Oladokun said: “The challenges hold wealth creation opportunities for us if we start turning our ideas and inventions into marketable products and services and in the process prove to the nation that indeed engineering development remains the catalyst for national development and the only path to sustainable economic growth.
“The effectiveness of engineering, technology and innovation as catalyst for wealth creation and transformational economic growth at both national and individual levels is vividly demonstrated in the way Silicon Valley, California, United States has changed the world.
“Meanwhile the impact of the sharp fall in commodity prices and COVID-19 resulting in the slowdown of some major economies has exposed the fragility and vulnerability of the Nigerian mono commodity based economy.”
