A maritime practitioner; Dr Eugene Nweke, has charged the government to engage in manpower development so as to ensure that many Nigerians partake in the production of the vehicles that are made in Nigeria.
Dr. Nweke, who spoke to Shipping Position Daily recently in Lagos, also urged the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to invest more money in research and development in our higher institutions instead of looking for foreigners to do them.
“Why not tell our NNPC to go back to our universities and bring money for research and development in our higher institutions, so that the faculty of mechanical engineering and so on will be the people that will develop all these things that we are talking about, instead of us looking for external bodies to do that, why do we even need foreigners to do all these. Why do we even believe so much in already made, let us develop people from our research. We are tired of all these things. How many vehicles have been assembled in Nigeria, have they met the Nigerian market. Let them go back to our universities, the federal government have approved the establishment of so many universities, let them go back to all those universities and make fund available for research and development. We are just creating universities, they should pump the money into faculties of engineering in other to develop our students and develop our manpower and we will grow from it. Who are the stakeholders they are talking about, Coscharis, Innoson? We are talking about development concept, technology that will be introduced into the market”.
He also urged the government to create enabling environment that will give technology room to thrive in the country, adding that by doing that it will help create a lot of job opportunities for our young graduates.
“If these people have good intention for this country, they should be talking about graduates that are willing to, that have the capacity to do all that. Let the use the money they have to create an enabling ground for our technologies to strive. They should bring our students send them out to go and study. Those people that are producing all these things started from school, they must start from school there must be an evolution to all these things. That is how it should be, if they start with all these stakeholders now at the end of the day they will start thinking of how to grant waiver. Is that what we will continue to do, let us pump money into research and development? We have a lot of young graduates who want to do something. Where is our science and technology, where are they?” he concluded.
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