Engineers from Nigeria don’t do any conversion exam anywhere in the world. Anywhere we are, we are engineers whether in Nigeria, in Washington, in Sydney or in Germany
By Moses Okorie
The former National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, as well as former deputy governor of Osun State, Senator Iyiola Omisere alongside other stakeholders within and outside the engineering sector have called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to invest more on engineering.
He stated this when he served as guest lecturer at the Nigerian Institute of Mechanical Engineers 15th Annual Mechanical Engineers Distinguished Lecture on the topic: ‘Imperative Mechanical Engineering Strategies of Socio-economic Development Based on National Budget, Challenges and Potentials’.
He lamented that instead of synergy among the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, COREN, and the Industrial Training Fund, ITF, but they compete among themselves, which he said, in the long run, would hamper engineering development in the country.
According to him, “COREN registers engineers; artisans, technicians and technologists, and ITF is supposed to fund the Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme, SIWES, but today, it is an aberration that ITF, being a Fund, is trying to compete with the COREN, which is an anomaly, and the resultant effect in Nigeria is that in another five to ten years, there would be”.
Omisere said for the first time in history, Nigerian engineers have gone far to sign what is known as Washington Accord by COREN.
“To drive the point home to all of us, you find out that if medical doctors or lawyers should go abroad to practice, they have to write conversion exams, but today, engineers from Nigeria don’t do any conversion exam anywhere in the world. Anywhere we are, we are engineers whether in Nigeria, in Washington, in Sydney or in Germany.
“This is a temporary achievement, we need cooperation from the government of Nigeria to ensure that proper things are done and the curriculum are followed strictly. Those are the little things that can enhance development in this sector.
“You can see that engineering is life. Without engineering there is no life. In as much as our budget is realization, we must work the talk.
Also speaking, Minister of State for Health, Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, congratulated the Nigerian Society of Mechanical Engineers for organizing the annual lecture to bring new ideas and interrogate what government and the society is doing with a view to improvement.
He advised other professionals to learn from this and put together machineries to regularly interact and bring out new ideas. He outlined the importance of engineering to healthcare delivery in the country.
According to him, “Between year 2024 and 2025, a lot of funding have been made available to improve our biomedical engineering schools to train more biomedical engineers and to ensure that we are able to maintain, domestically, some of the sophisticated machines that we use in providing healthcare to our people”.
Dignitaries who grace the occasion were Vice President Kashim Shettima; founding national chairman of the APC, Chief Bisi Akande; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, who was represented; former Ondo State governor, Olusegun Mimiko, members of the National Assembly and a host of others.
Awards were also presented to Omisere and Akande.