The Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) has lamented the continuous use of foreign engineers by the Federal Government to execute jobs in the country against the indigenous ones.
President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Mr Adekunle Mokuolu, cautioned government against the practice, saying the jobs handled by foreigner engineers in the country can also be judiciously executed by Nigerian engineers.
Describing the preference for foreign engineers over domestic ones as capital flight, Mokuolu added that the presence of many foreigner engineers plying their trade across the country was not due to the absence of capable Nigerian engineers.
He blamed the lack of political will by the nation’s leaders for the issue and the inability of government to harness and make use of indigenous engineers to execute such jobs.
Speaking in Eket during the Investiture of Engr. Aniebiet Udoh as Chairman of NSE, Eket branch, and the 2019 Engineering Week which has the theme: “Innovative and Reverse Engineering: The Imperative of Institutional Synergy for Sustainable Development”, the NSE President said Nigerian Engineers were well trained and capable of competing with their contemporaries anywhere in the world.
He stated that Nigerian Engineers were intellectually and ethical capable to deliver on any engineering challenge facing the country, adding that the call for government to patronise Nigerian engineers was because engineering is not a skill to acquire and keep.
He noted that engineering requires continuous usage for the engineer to become better, and maintained that capabilities, skills or knowledge not used gets eroded overtime.
The NSE President expressed hope that the current unfavourable economic situation in the country would help to check the dependence on foreign engineers.
He said the situation would force the federal government to develop local capacity, adding that the Local Content Development Law came about as a result of Nigeria’s financial difficulty in the oil business.
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