SAN FRANCISCO, October 04, (THEWILL) – Former Education minister, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has stated that Nigeria will soon have no need for her crude oil, adding that the country’s continued grip on crude oil as the mainstay of her economy would come to an end in the near future.
This was as she noted that major oil producing countries are currently diversifying from their dependence on the commodity while Nigeria looked adamant to the global energy matrix being keyed into by its peers.
Speaking at the 2017 civil engineering conference organised by the Abuja chapter of the Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers, NICE, an offshoot of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, NSE, Ezekwesili called out members of the engineering profession in Nigeria for the country’s decrepit and inferior infrastructure base.
She spoke within the theme of the conference – fighting corruption in Nigeria: the role of engineering profession, where she posited that the refusal of engineers to show character, competence and capacity in their tasks has contributed to the decay in infrastructure.
While making a call for an immediate diversification of Nigeria’s economy, the former Vice President of the World Bank, Africa Division said, “Let me tell you something, Norway, one of the biggest oil producers has just stashed $1 trillion of her oil money in a sovereign wealth fund.
“I was in Norway recently, and 10 per cent of vehicles used there run on electric. Nigeria should ask herself these critical questions because very soon, Nigeria will drink her crude oil.”
On the sorry state of infrastructure and how engineers contributed to that, Ezekwesili said that over the years, engineers in the country have contributed to the corrupt practices that have kept Nigeria from developing her infrastructure.
According to her, “You are at the heart of public investment. Governance can be looked on as a market – a supply side and a demand side. Those of you that are part of the supply side of governance, what quality of governance are you supplying?
“As an engineer in government, what are the ethics of the profession, how are you upholding the systems of professionalism that are supposed to determine the value for money in every engineering process that you are responsible?”
The former minister continued: “Are you trying to pretend that you are not part of government when we know that in governance, the class that has security of tenure is the technocratic class, and that is who you are. The failure of Nigeria to produce good outcomes will be squarely deposited on the heads of many of you here.”
She equally claimed that the engineering profession has abdicated its responsibility to hold government and its members to account on erratic practices, adding that engineers rarely penalised their members found wanting for many of the building collapses in the country among other infrastructural failures.
