Why engineering education is vital—Expert

AN engineering expert and lawyer, Tope Oribuyaku, has stressed the need for engineering education in Nigeria. He also said this would help the country to overcome problems such as building collapse, infrastructural deficiencies and other problems.

Oribuyaku, who stated this while speaking at the first edition of Tope Oribuyaku Annual Public Lecture, which held recently in Ado-Ekiti, pointed out that the problems relating to infrastructure in the country was “a problem of quality.”

In the lecture entitled ‘Buying Nigerian Goods and Services as Strategy to Fight Youth Unemployment: How Do We Achieve It?’, Oribuyaku contended that “we must make what we buy; we must buy what we make and to achieve this, we must take steps that are deliberately tailored towards achieving that.”

While noting that unemployment in Nigeria was at its all-time high in the first quarter of 2016, citing statistics made available by the Federal Government, he said “the producers, the consumers and the government are the three main groups that must be examined in order to determine how we can succeed in the quest to make local products acceptable.”

Oribuyaku, who trained as an engineer, lawyer, builder, quantity surveyor and works as a World Bank consultant, said as Nigerians, “we must be able to add value to what we produce” and called on Ekiti State government to set up Industrial Planning Development Committee.”

He also recommended what he called “One Training a Year (OTAY)” for engineering practitioners, saying “this will transform the students and stakeholders and help build the profession.”

Speaking on the occasion, deputy governor of the state, Dr. Kolapo Olubunmi Olusola, charged the participants in the lecture, which included engineering students, to imbibe what he described as “advancing mentality,” saying “you must have a mentality to advance or advancing mentality and you must keep advancing until you achieve your goal.”