‘If Buhari challenges Nigerian engineers, we’ll fix refineries, Ajaokuta mills, moribund railways’

Kindly speak on your vision as the newly elected national chairmanof Nigerian Institution of Mechanical Engineers?

My vision is not very different from the vision of the institution and that vision is making mechanical engineering profession the best it could be in serving the Nigerian populace.

Let me start by saying welfare of our members. This Institution is going to do the best it can, we are going to go out of our way to first educate Nigerians on the job of the mechanical engineers. A Mechanical Engineer is not a mechanic that repairs cars, the mechanical is the very first field of Engineering that came to life, out of it, so many have come but today mechanical is still there very strong. By the time we can assist our members get this jobs, we are in a way telling the client to be that we are also going to be there ensure that jobs that our members deliver are up to standard.
For us, it’s either yes or nothing, what do I mean by that, if you’re going to give a Mechanical Engineer a job of designing and building a structure, be it a subsist structure or the rest, you are in a way handling over the welfare, safety and other things, you are given him the full trust of the lives of those who are going to use that thing which may include himself or his children. Of all the Engineering fields, we are the one that in whatever you do, as long as long as engineering is concerned you will go through first a mechanical engineer before you get there. An electrical engineer is also important but it takes care of is the product of a Mechanical Engineering process, so it is the bedrock of the Engineering profession.

It is the Mechanical Engineer who has to design and build the turbine and make sure it runs, it is when this is done that the electricity is produced for the electrical engineer to manage with.
Julius Berger is a very big company, every equipments they use to build whatever they do are mechanical and Julius Berger is supposed to be a civil construction company, that is true of every other engineering field so the Mechanical Engineer is always there knowing full well that whatever he has to do must be done very well to protect his own self and other people. So we will do our best to insist on the best arm of mechanical engineering for Nigeria.

This is strictly the ethics of Mechanical Engineering; engineering is about making life easier for the other man. A mechanical engineer designs a vehicle not because he must ride the best car on earth but he wants life to be easier for the other man out there. You go into a high rise building and you see a lift, that is a mechanical engineering product. People can climb but mechanical engineers looked and saw that we can make life easier for these people, let’s put a lift for them, that is purely mechanical. But if you build a lift and it is sub-standard, you might be the first victim because when you are building, you are going to put to test what you have built, who told you the very first test run you are going to take will not be the last? So ethics of Engineering, by extension the mechanical engineering is do the best you can, the best way you can, for the best of humanity.

Let me answer the last question first, it can only be too late when you are six feet under the ground. It cannot be too late, the world is not endingtomorrow;  we have put together a Vision 2020 of being among the 20 countries with the best economy in the world so at that point we cannot be talking about impossibility. Now, the question is how much of the work it may require to achieve this? We have not done any, why didn’t we do that? What was even needed was science and technology and all you needed to do that was engineering but we kept it aside and tried to get it done, how is that possible? We have good ideas in our vision 2020 agenda, we’ve told all the stories, we’ve propounded all the laws and all the philosophies we can think of but when it comes to implementation, we have gone bad because we left out the real base on which we are suppose to build which is engineering. And we you talk engineering, I talk mechanical, others talk other fields, so when I mention engineering I mean mechanical. I already told you, there is nothing other field of engineering would do with mechanical engineering, it doesn’t happen. The chemical engineer when you go to NNPC, yes they are very useful but what is there job? The chemical products of mechanical engineer like boiler, compressors and the rest of them are mechanical; the product is what is chemical. Now the 2020 would have worked if we had looked back and decided that to look at our engineering infrastructure, can we go back to the schools and change our curriculum so that when you come out of school as a mechanical engineer, you already have a place to go. Look at Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) for instance, even while you are student you are already employed, the day you come out, you can face the war or defend your country as the case may be. That is how the system of education is supposed to be, that is the type of training we’ll wish to have a Nigerian engineer go through. That the day he comes out, he should be able to pick up something and say this is this and that is that. But the curriculum we are running today which NSE and NAMEIC is working so very hard to change is one that after six years of schooling, you now come out and start learning how to be an engineer, if you are lucky, you will find yourself in a place where there are people who are ready to mentor you and show you the nitty-gritty, if you are not, too bad for you, you can only answer the name engineer and be able to defend that certificate and that name.

Quite numbers of efforts have been put in place, there have been bills sent to the National Assembly, and there have been presentations made to both NUC and the Ministry of Education. NBTE has also received lots and lots of bills then NSE has taking it upon herself to go from school trying to see if there is any way they at that point change one or two things even if it means going to schools and getting them to accept for the institution or the NSE to build laboratories or equip them or go out to get some sponsors and do it for them. I may not have the money to do something but I may have some friends, I can convince them to come and do it and at the end of the day, it becomes a win-win thing. But so far, we have not achieved much, and until we start achieving much, then and only then we could begin to start talking about 2020 or as I see it, we may be talking about 2040 very soon if the care is not taken. We are sitting down here when year 2000 came and past then we say vision 2010, many people did not even hear about the vision and the documentation before we have to say no that didn’t work lets go to vision 2020 and the 2020 has come what have we put on ground? So many written books, written works; so many of them took place.

Looking at abandoned projects, projects get abandoned for certain reasons; there are so many things that may lead to projects being abandoned. One could be from planning, once you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If in planning, you are already aware that to achieve a goal, it will cost you N20 million and all you have in pocket is N2 million and you went ahead to commence a project that will cost you N20 million and you know that the time within which you can do this is two years, are you hoping that a miracle will happen from which you will now get N18 million to augment? It is not easy as that, our problem is we go out, start projects without financial muscle, we believe that when we start it a miracle will happen somewhere to get it completed, no it doesn’t work that way. It will even be reasonable if you have 90 percent of the fund you need, then you go out. We have gone to get ourselves fooled by so many people in so many fields, they will tell you to go ahead and start there is PPP arrangement to get it done, why not plan out, get the arrangement ready, get the understanding, sign the MOU, it is then you start the project. The people outside the country that we copy from don’t start any project until they have the money to the last kobo, why don’t we copy that?
The second thing is, we have an idea like an Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill, instead of sitting down idly, they can call Nigerian engineers to go and design a steel capacity, it is not something Nigerian engineers can’t do but we have the mindset that says that that it is something they cannot do, those that we have in our country are not good. The question I always ask people when they bring the foreigners, yes the foreigners can do it, yes that is very true. Julius Berger is the best construction company in Nigeria, how many Germans come to Nigeria to do that job? Are they not Nigerian engineers and technicians that are doing the job? In the whole of Julius Berger do we have up to 2,000 Germans in Nigeria? We don’t but we still have not seen the fact it is the Nigerians that are doing the main jobs, the other man (expatriate) is here to make money. All he does is to gather the Nigerians and say you people should go and carry out the task this is the drawing; he will not even be there to tell them what to do. Added to the fact that it is now well known that a lot of people you call themselves expatriates are not even trained engineers by profession, but because when they come, we help them to repatriate whatever they were able to make in the name of salaries or whatever they bring them. Since we don’t ask questions, they work.
Nigerian set of engineers and NAIMEC by extension have even made it a thing of fight that before you come into this country to operate as an engineer, you must register with COREN, let’s test you, let’s see your certificates…

They are not complying; the same people who bring them are the ones protecting them. COREN is doing the best it can, if for any reason one’s attention is drawn to COREN or NSE to a person claiming to be an engineer, we will go after the person, thank God there is an MoU with ICPC. ICPC will be called in when such cases come up because COREN doesn’t have the muscle to prosecute, we don’t have the laws backing us to do so; those are the things that we need.
For projects not to be abandoned, first, let us learn how to plan properly, in planning to let us be sure that the money to execute such projects is on ground. Let us also know that if a foreigner or an expatriate as you may want to call them is taking N20 to deliver a job, a Nigerian will take N5 for the same job.

The corruption tendencies are included when an expatriate comes; when he (an expatriate) comes, if a Nigerian is to carry out an infrastructural development, let’s assume that corruption is going to put 30 percent on the real cost, if an expatriate comes, corruption will put 300 percent. For the Nigerian, even that 30 percent must scare him, he’s going to hide it and pretend he’s the good man who behaves himself well but for the expatriate, he doesn’t have anything to lose, give him the job, what is yours and how do you want it will be the main priority, Nigerians don’t carry money and go and bank, it is the same expatriate that go there to open account for the illegal deals to be perfected.
I’ll tell you one thing, I have a friend who works with a Lebanese Construction Company; he went to Lebanon and came back and said to me, ‘do you know what, if you go to Lebanon, any hotel that a Nigerian comes in, they have hit gold. That means they have made all the profits they have to make for a whole year because their (Lebanese) company in Nigeria here that is taking the man to Lebanon will deposit more money than the hotel needs. The company will tell the hotel management to give him everything he wants, treat him like a king, they spend real money but at the end of the day, the company will collect three times that amount.

Yes, the Nigerian Institution of Mechanical Engineers is there and very ready to make things work in the refineries. I can tell you, our members are already making things work in the refineries. Let’s look at it this way, we are waiting for the day when somebody will come from somewhere and tell us that the refineries are working but right here, let’s make it a challenge, what will happen if Mr. President calls Nigerian Engineers and say come, ‘I have four refineries in this country and I’m not going to import one drop of fuel again; I’m not going  to import bolts or nots, I’m not going to give you one dollar, everything you need, source for it in this country, you have six months to make the refineries work, if anybody tries to disturb you to make it work, just let me know, it will be a fight between me and that person, if at the end of six months you are not able to do it, you are going to jail.’ He has given you everything including protection, it is left to the engineers to deliver and I can assure you we will deliver within the period given. During the Biafran war, nobody said anyone will go to jail but it was a do-or-die affair; did the Biafrans who are Nigerian Engineers didn’t work? They could not even leave Biafra let alone import goods, do they not use the things in Biafra to produce? There is nothing that was produced in Biafra that Nigeria is producing today.
Within 30 months, if we say except Nigerians build their own cars no car will run in this country, cars will begin to appear on the roads of Nigeria in the next one year, made-in Nigeria from the scratch. The whole thing is we on our own have decided that life is best when others do it for us, not when we do it ourselves. Until we learn to do things ourselves, we are joking.