NLNG commissions $2m engineering centre to aid research, training

As part of its efforts to aid research and development in the country, The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG), has commissioned a $2 million engineering laboratory at the University of Ilorin.

Speaking at the commissioning of the facility, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NLNG, Babs Omotowa said this initiative is part of the implementation of the company’s $12 million University Support Programme (USP).

He said; “The USP is one of NLNG’s approaches to developing Nigerian human capital and fostering technological advancement. We recognise that universities, with their crop of young people and nimble minds, when aided properly, are the fertile grounds from which ideas to fast track Nigeria’s progress will spring”.

Omotowa, citing some of the achievements of the company said; “At Nigeria LNG, we like to proudly assert that we have successfully built a great company.

That is a fact. But today our challenge and focus is building an even greater one to bequeath to our successors and to Nigeria. Therefore, the USP project is, in a sense, another chapter in that momentous journey and another feather in NLNG’s cap as a socially responsible corporate organisation.

He then pledged that NLNG “will continue to offer scholarships to deserving young Nigerians at secondary school, university and post graduate levels. We will also endow the Nigeria Prize for Science and the Nigeria Prize for Literature worth a $100,000 each, and run the Bonny Vocational Centre, which awards the International Technical Vocation Level 3 Certificate of London City and Guilds and the Nigerian Skills Technical Certificate to graduates.

“I expect that the new laboratory complex will be put to excellent use. The present administration has called for home-grown solutions to the problems facing us as a nation- from agriculture, power generation and distribution, technological advancement, to healthcare and infrastructure development,” he said.

Also speaking, the Commissioner for Education, Musa Yekiti, commended Nigeria LNG stating that it has distinguished itself as a unifying corporate organisation in the face of the diverse interests plaguing the unity of the country, evidenced by the intense clamour for regional autonomy and resource control in the respective zones.

He added the USP programme was a rare show of commitment to the good of the nation in spite of the security and other situations plaguing various parts of the country.

The projects in the remaining two universities, University of Maiduguri and University of Nigeria, Nsukka, are at different levels of completion.

The six universities were selected based on rankings by the National Universities Commission (NUC), other international bodies, as well as long-standing contributions to the development of local capacity in Nigeria and their out-standing performance within each of the six geopolitical zones in the country, especially in the area of engineering and technical education’’, he explained.