Engr Oliver Anyaeji is the 30th President of Nigeria Society of Engineers. In this interview with Chika Okeke of Leadership, he lambasted the three tiers of government for sidelining engineers in policy making, a situation he attributes to persistent failures of the government.
Absence of infrastructure especially at the Satellite towns is one of the major challenges to economic development. How do you think government can resolve these problems?
The infrastructure challenges are made by us by not following the master plan for the development of Abuja. You will realize that the number of people living in Abuja is increasing daily than what was projected in the master plan, so it’s been a problem. When you begin to say that you want to restore the master plan by pruning down the number of people living in these areas, it becomes a very serious challenge.
The infrastructure challenges are made by us by not following the master plan for the development of Abuja.
Despite this, government still needs to address the issue of transportation. For instance in Karu and other satellite towns in Abuja, we will find out that even the expressway that is supposed to link people to the city is already a bottleneck and there is a need to create another conduit by- passing the military area and going straight to Asokoro then to the Federal secretariat. It’s urgently asking for attention.
You will also find out that people coming from Gwagwalada need to go through the Airport road to connect to the town. It’s usually a big hassle for residents living in Gwagwalada every morning and you will begin to wonder why they cannot build additional road from Gwagwalada straight into the town and hitting the Asokoro area to reduce the burden on the Airport road. Notwithstanding the expansion of Airport road, we still see this hold-up every morning.
We also have other limitations like transfer of water to satellite towns. I am expecting that the ministry of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Ministry of Water Resources should establish more infrastructure for the transfer of water to satellite areas especially with the Ministry of Water Resources helping to transfer water from dams outside Abuja like Gurara dam. When that is done in Abuja, the next stage is to ensure that it gets to some of these satellite areas.
There is an omission in the development of the city which also robbed the satellite towns of gas. As a new city, there ought to be arrangement made for bringing in natural gas and the gas lines would have been part of the building of the city which was not so. We are really not getting the benefit of that but we hope that when the gas line from Ajaokuta coming to Abuja and continuing to Kaduna is done, perhaps the issue of gas will be solved both for the satellite towns and the city.
Electricity is a general problem not only for Abuja but for most parts of the country. We hope that when more generation, distribution and transmission capacity are achieved, certainly, the improvement will continue. There is already some improvement now with a lot of injection substations built in these satellite areas. I believe that more will be built to improve the power situation in these places.
For telecommunication, I think people are not complaining too much and I think it’s working virtually in all satellite areas. Perhaps, what we should be talking about is the landlines because there is a need to make it functional.
What is your reaction to insinuations that engineers cannot participate in policy and decision making of the government?
That is a disaster. That is why the government is not succeeding because in the days when engineers were allowed to participate at those levels, things moved better. The entire stock of assets owned by the country was established at a time when engineers participated at the policy level. When they began to exclude engineers from policy level, the national resources began to be wasted and we suspect that is why they don’t want to include engineers.
The entire stock of assets owned by the country was established at a time when engineers participated at the policy level.
If you read President Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope’, you will discover where he mentioned that he wished there were more engineers in Washington DC than lawyers but in Nigeria, the government is flooding lawyers in places where engineers ought to be. What we want to state clearly to the government and all Nigerians is that there is no nation that have sued itself to development. You cannot sue to court and get development; rather nation engineers themselves to development. It’s only in Nigeria that there is a lot of conspiracy and a lot of effort made towards sidelining engineering activities which is over 90 percent of what government has to do.
It’s a pity and shame for this government and its unfortunate for the citizens.
What is the position of NSE on poor remuneration for engineers?
We feel that its part of the war against engineers from the government and those that have found themselves fortunate to be at the corridors of power because how can you explain that engineers who spends higher years in training is marginalised.
They study five years in the university and four years in the industry before they can be registered as an engineer.
In the civil service, they are the least paid. Other professionals that spend four years at the university are placed on level 10 while engineers are placed in level 8 which is crazy. It is totally unacceptable and until the country stops that, it will be difficult to see progress.
Other professionals that spend four years at the university are placed on level 10 while engineers are placed in level 8 which is crazy
Expatriates have taken over jobs previously meant for engineers and artisans. Don’t you think it’s a case of incompetence?
It has nothing to do with incompetency because it is the duty of government to make sure that they train and support Nigerian engineers, contractors, consultants, vendors, manufacturers and engineering service providers. Can you recall when colonial people came?. They came and tried to train Nigerians that were not very educated to become contractors, to build big structures, roads and bridges and they continued to give them jobs to assure them guaranteed workload. They developed, bought equipment’s, employed people and trained them on the jobs, so they kept improving. But such thing disappeared for over 30 to 40 years. The government lost interest in developing such contractors and consultants, so if you notice preponderance of foreign contractors, it is in continuation of our claims that engineers are neglected.
it is the duty of government to make sure that they train and support Nigerian engineers, contractors, consultants, vendors, manufacturers and engineering service providers.
The opportunities they should provide for those Nigerians to continue to sharpen their skills and deepen their experiences and widen their participation have been given to foreigners. A Nigerian contractor without a work cannot build up his skills.
Recently, the federal government revealed its intention to build one million housing units annually in collaboration with States and private investors to reduce the over 17 million housing deficit. Do you think the target can be achieved?
Certainly, it can be achieved because the present administration is quite resolute and it can be more easily achieved if they go about it by starting from manufacturing the building materials. They must make sure that all the building materials needed to build and complete a house are locally made by establishing the factories. Instead of importing the materials, enter into agreement with those countries to build the factories in Nigeria. If you throw such proposals at them, they will jump at it and be happy so that it will reduce the amount of money to be spent in developing the houses and keep millions of Nigerians at work.
