Why we conferred NSE fellowship on Buhari, by Anyaeji

The President and Chairman of Council of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Otis Anyaeji, has disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari and other eminent Nigerians were conferred with honourary fellows of the society for their contributions to the cause of engineering profession in the country.

Speaking in an interview after the NSE Special Dinner for the conferment of fellowship on 20 members in Abuja recently, Anyaeji said the award was conferred on Buhari in 2009 during the society’s annual conference in Owerri, Imo State.

“We also have eminent Nigerians, like Chief Ernest Shonekan, the late Chief MKO Abiola, former governor of Cross River State, Senator Liyel Imoke, and a few others.

“The criteria are structured such that the person must have made contributions to the cause of engineering and the NSE.”

He recalled that a former Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Prince Bola Ajibola, was made an honourary fellow in 2003, adding that the society looked at what he did when he was AGF, whereby the profession had issues with reformed process of the company law establishing COREN at the time.

“For the benefit of our friends who are non-engineers, I will like to inform you that apart from the opportunity for publicity and networking that our Special Dinner provides, conferment of Fellowship on deserving distinguished engineers has come to stay as the highpoint of the Dinner.”

Chairman, Board of Fellows/College of Fellows of NSE, Chief Chris Okoye, in his welcome remarks, extended his warm felicitations to the Fellows and the new conferees and their spouses.

Okoye said repositioning the engineering profession in the official and public imagination is the concern of the Board.

“In fact, the founding fathers of the NSE were pre-occupied with this task. A communiqué of this great society issued at the end of the 1968 Annual Conference, which was recently made public, showed how deeply concerned the NSE institution felt about the status of our profession in Nigeria,” he recalled.