Experts task government, engineers on modern infrastructure system

Face with declining infrastructural facilities, engineers have urged to embrace technology based devices in infrastructural management.The government at all levels has also been tasked to focus on building infrastructure that would address the challenge posed by inefficient transport services.

Speaking at a Business Luncheon, themed: “Business Infrastructure For The Internet of Things” organized by the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Apapa Branch, Lagos, the Director in charge of Innovations and Value Added Services, Inlaks Limited, Oladimeji Koyejo, said that technology provides complete business transparency, timeliness of intervention in terms of adverse effects.

He explained that the initiative is about maximizing the use of technology to harvest data that have hitherto been trapped in operational technology devices thereby starving the business enterprise of what the data could have been used for in business management review and innovations.

Koyejo who is an engineer posited that since the technology is about the release of trapped treasure of data present in legacy operational technology infrastructure, Nigerian engineers must therefore brace up to determine data that are precious to their enterprise which are trapped in operational infrastructure and introduce things like sensors, network interfaces and protocols to harvest the information. He said, they could thereafter work on the data, and developed them into applications that could be used for the analytics and business intelligence.

While inducting about 19 fresh fellows, the National President of Nigeria Society of Engineers, Otis Anyaeji represented by Felix Ibitoye charged them to be innovative, and disciplined in discharging their duties to the society.

The NSE branch Chairman, Dr. Ombugadu Garba assured that the Nigeria engineers would not relent in its roles in providing expert advice to government through programmes.
According to him, advancement in technological infrastructure have not been fully utilized in both public and private sectors of the economy thereby, making businesses to squabble amid lots of challenges.

Meanwhile, a Professor of Transport Geography, Emman Ogunbodede who spoke at the 10th Inaugural Lecture of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State with the theme, “Trading space for a Cost: A Transport Geographer’s View”, said government should prioritize its programmes towards solving the transportation problem as the country urgently needs infrastructural development to meet the relative growth in human population especially in the urban space.

Ogunbodede urged government to encourage the construction of circular roads in cities with over two million populations in order to aid efficient distribution of traffic within the urban centres.

He said that the movement of traffic that are not destined for the city centre should be diverted to circular roads or bye-passes with a view to assisting to distribute traffic not meant for the city centre to the periphery.

“The three tiers of government should promote the use of non-motorized mobility in the urban centres that now qualify as metropolis and megalopolis. Light rail system should be encouraged from the city centre to the outskirts of the urban area. This will greatly discourage and reduce the congestion experienced in the Central Business District (CBD). Traffic Information System (TIS) should be incorporated into the existing traffic management system of cities”, he said.