Thursday, 18th April 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Engineers want local fabrication of machine tools to check recession

By Collins Olayinka, Abuja
15 September 2016   |   5:44 am
Engineers have urged the Federal Government to encourage the local building of machine tools as a strategy to exit the economic recession.
President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Otis Anyaeji.

President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Otis Anyaeji.

Engineers have urged the Federal Government to encourage the local building of machine tools as a strategy to exit the economic recession.

The President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Otis Anyaeji, who made the appeal in Abuja at the inauguration of the Nigerian Society of Safety Engineers (NISE) executives, explained that the local manufacturing of machine tools represents a quick way to check the economic situation.

Anyaeji said, “The automotive sector has the linkages with other sectors that government should encourage people to go into. If we want to grow the economy in a sustainable manner, the country must immediately make huge investments in the machine tools sector.

“This is the sector that makes machines for other sectors. For sometimes now, our economy has been inactive which literarily means negative growth. Nigeria can escape from the negative growth when the economy becomes active especially in the productive areas.”

He said government must begin to get the people involved in the manufacturing of what Nigerians consume.

The NSE boss explained that with the huge deficit of housing in Nigeria, government should encourage builders to embark on massive building, owing to its multi-layer economic benefits.

He said one thing that Nigeria must take very seriously is housing. It is believed that when a country’s housing sector is active, such a country would never get into recession. The reason for that assertion is because of the linkage of inputs into housing.

Anyaeji hinted that the NSE is already talking to government via the ministries of industry, trade and investment, transportation and power, works and housing regarding the projects that would be built with the loan that Nigeria is seeking to obtain from the Chinese government.

The NSE helmsman said that while the NSE is not against borrowing by government, efforts must be made to ensure clauses that would translate into cogent and speedy development of the nation’s infrastructure are inserted in the agreements.

He said: “We have made it very clear to government that there is the need to create a manufacturing sector that will manufacture the entire infrastructure that would be needed in the execution of the projects. What that means is that government should look for investment into the manufacturing sector.

“Government should make it a matter of policy to insert into all the agreements to obtain loan that the materials needed for execution of projects would be sourced within Nigeria. The society is convinced that toeing this line would speed up the process of exiting the economic recession Nigeria is presently going through.”

Chairman of the Nigerian Institutions of Safety Engineers (NISE), Abiodun Oyedepo, said the association would soon unveil safety codes that are aimed at boosting the safety of projects.

12 Comments

  • Author’s gravatar

    cassava cultivation has two bottlenecks that call for urgent technological intervention to encourage more cultivation: at the point of planting; a pulled wheel barrow slit at the bottom set to release cassava cuttings at intervals into a cut in the soil will solve this; and at harvesting; an earth vibrator that can shake loose cassava tubers and picking them into a hopper will also solve this back aching process. I just wonder what our engineers are doing to design home made implements.

  • Author’s gravatar

    An old man who is going to turn 56 years old in a few weeks still reminesce on what should have been. The high sounding named societies cannot even make spokes let alone fabricate anything; they are too drunk to keep their hands straight.

  • Author’s gravatar

    I still dont understand why everybody pushes everything to the Govt. Why can’t members of the NSE go ahead and invest in such a machine tool manufacturing company?

    Govt role is policies, not building, setting up or running business for crying out loud!

  • Author’s gravatar

    Good thing that the comments, apart from Kokoman, are positive, encouraging the ,proposal of our engineers. I am an old teacher, who, after retirement co-started a

    remedial school based on the Motto “It’s never too late to mend”. Other countries have used the system to improve the lives of their citizens, with benefits including creating employment opportunities for the youth. India is an example. Forty years ago, I visited India on a brief official mission, and was impressed by the fact that there were virtually no foreign-made cars! Our visit enabled me to see the reason: we visited prosperous firm, Tata, and learnt that they manufactured the machines needed for printing the millions of books, newspapers etc. for the country. Apparently they first imported two excellent printing machines from a European country, meticulously dismantled one of the machines, and then went on to manufacture the many pieces that made up the machine, to ensure that they could put them together, as well as the other imported machine they had not dismantled. Their system worked, and they did not need to spend precious money importing thousands and thousands of the presses the country needed.
    If the NSE pursue their proposal, we will save money by not importing, find jobs for our millions of jobless graduates, etc. and so forth.