Dapo Abiodun seeks development of local technology

UTME applicants in Ogun lament inability to enrol for national ID cards
Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun yesterday urged the development of indigenous technology to solve the numerous challenges facing Nigeria and other developing nations instead of relying on the West.

Abiodun, who spoke at the third convocation ceremony of Ogun State Institute of Technology, Igbesa, said that technology from advanced countries required much money with little results on the local economy. “In achieving the sustainable development goals, science and technology must be designed and made suitable to the resources of the particular group of people. It must be appropriate technology, which relies on local skills and resources that fit into the peculiarity of the people,” he said.

He said the establishment of the institute was a strategy to develop the technical capacity of the state, adding that the school fits into the general plan of providing manpower for the development of the state.Abiodun, who offered automatic employment to the overall best graduating student, Mrs. Adedokun Yetunde, in the state civil service, Mrs. Adedokun Yetunde and offered cash rewards to 58 students with CGPA of 3.00 and above, charged the graduands to put what they have learnt in the school into good use by proffering solutions to the many challenges facing humanity.

In another development, hundreds of applicants of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in Ogun State yesterday protested their alleged inability to enrol for National Identity Cards by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).The aggrieved applicants, accompanied by some of their parents, stormed the secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Abeokuta, chanting solidarity songs to register their grievances.

They accused the authorities of the Abeokuta office of the NIMC of using armed policemen to chase them away from the their office located at the Federal Secretariat in Oke-Mosan area of the state.They said that many of them had been visiting the NIMC office to enrol for their national identity cards for the past three weeks but were always told by NIMC officials that there was no electricity to power the gadgets used for enrolment.