Patronise indigenous hands to abate unemployment – Women engineers

GOVERNMENT has been advised to patronise indigenous engineers and reduce preference for foreign ones to abate growing unemployment rate.

Chairperson of Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria (APWEN), Ilorin Branch, Bilikisu Jimoh, who gave the piece of advice said engagement of indigenous engineers would increase job opportunities for Nigerians and thus reduce unemployment and poverty level in the country.

Jimoh who spoke during her investiture as the 7th chairperson of the APWEN in Ilorin at the weekend said the Nigerian Engineers are as competent and diligent as their foreign counterparts.

She said buildings that had collapsed in the country are , in most cases, built by people other than professional engineers and advised that building projects should be entrusted with qualified engineers to check the disaster of building collapse.

The APWEN boss also said that the association had embarked on encouragement of secondary school girls into engineering programmes by gingering them to embrace sciences.

“We have it in our plans to touch the lives of young ones by introducing girls in secondary schools into the sciences leading to engineering profession. To lift this profession to her desirable output, the mentoring programme is one of the priorities where we have mentors and mentees.

“Basically, we want to work round the clock to ensure that periodically we visit some public schools to discuss the current work and answer questions about career opportunities,” she stated.

Jimoh said the organisation intended to open windows of opportunities for her members to develop new strategies and modern digital techniques.

In her address at the occasion, wife of Kwara State governor, Omolewa Ahmed, hailed the commitment of the association to promotion of girl child education, saying it was a good gesture at complementing government’s efforts on development of education.

Ahmed who was represented at the occasion by Special Adviser on Women Affairs, Biola Adimula, lauded pedigree of Jimoh in the association and prayed that God would grant her wisdom to run a successful tenure in her new post.