The body, which made the call during its annual lecture and induction of new Fellows in Lagos last week, said the country’s potential in the production of a wide range of polymer products was sufficient for local needs as well as exportation.
While delivering the lecture titled ‘Engineering opportunities and challenges related to producing a broad range of polymer products from oil and gas,’ a professor at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin, United States, Wills Ray, who was represented by Prof. BabatundeOgunaike, said the country’s oil sector was capable of producing sufficient polymer products.
He said the time had come for Nigeria to use its locally made polymer and export same rather than importing the product.
“Nigeria can successfully achieve polymer production process that allow expansion of processing variety and larger volume of the product for both domestic and export, especially, to the entire West African region,” he said
Ray said, “There are well-regarded and successful polymer production processes available for license that can be installed in Nigeria to take advantage of the large volumes of inexpensive oil, gas and refined products available locally.
“Creating and expanding the production of polymers will allow the expansion of the domestic polymer processing industry to provide more varieties and larger volumes of polymer consumer products for both domestic use and export. Nigerians must embrace the production of polymer materials.”
Earlier in his address, the President, NAE, Prof. AyodeleOgunye, said polymer production was becoming more relevant to the advancement of various sub-sectors of the nation’s economy.
He, therefore, urged the federal government and stakeholders in the oil and gas industry to utilize the abundant benefits in polymer production to the country’s advantage.
