The President, Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, Engr. Kashim Ali, has identified huge costs, unnecessary high tastes and the absence of sustainability strategies as factors responsible for the harsh economic climate in the
country.
Ali, who spoke exclusively to our correspondent in Abuja, added that the lesson to take from the economic hardship was the need for moderation and sustainability in Nigerians’ choices.
“Sustainability must be the basis for our planning and execution,” he said.
The COREN president noted, “The economic situation in Nigeria now is like the case of a middleman who was a local businessman, who made huge fortunes from trading in palm kernel when there was high demand for it by industries. He goes around his villagers and collected a lot of palm kernel at little or no cost and transports them to the city where he sells to food processing companies at very lucrative rate, made huge fortune and began to spend according to his new financial status.
“But things suddenly changed and the company stopped buying palm kernel and his source of income closed and he became bankrupt because he failed to save and failed to invest in other goods. This is the case of Nigeria. We were selling oil and when we got the money, we consumed it. We expanded our capacity for consumption and our tastes grew and we no longer enjoyed eating our own foods again, instead, we desired imported products that we didn’t quite need. Unfortunately, Nigeria did not put in place a sustainable background that could have guaranteed the sustainability of our tastes.”
While lamenting that the situation is worsened by the population explosion in the midst of expanded outlets for costly expenses that are not sustainable, he said money from the country’s oil resources suddenly crashed and the nation was suddenly faced with the consequential ripple effect of the failure to put in place strategies that could have guaranteed continuous flow of income needed to feed our luxuries.
Stressing the importance of sustainability in national development, he said, “If we want to construct a road, there must be a sustainability analysis of that road. It may be considered wasteful if a state government builds an airport in the capital because the governor wants to fly within the state, but if that must be done, the government must ensure that it builds businesses around the airport in order to generate income from the airport.”
Giving another example of unnecessary expenses, he said, “Because some people have so much money, they decide to purchase private jets and planes, which, in the end, cause a lot of difficulty. Aircraft are like birds that must be in constant use and must not be parked for too long. They are comfortable when they are in the air, when they are in use. Unfortunately, owners do not have the means to maintain them.
“Especially when you are travelling within a state, you don’t really need to travel in a jet engine but Nigerians prefer to travel in the expensive jet engines, which are not necessary for travels within a not too large country.”
Discussing how a country could cut cost, he said, “Germany, one of the largest economies in the world, does not have an electoral commission. Instead, elections are conducted by one of the ministries as one of its many tasks, unlike Nigeria, which commits an entire institution to the task of conducting elections.
“When the cost of running a country becomes too high, it causes economic instability in the system. A major guide for evaluating engineering development is how busy engineers are. If engineers are not busy, it means there is no development going on because infrastructures are not being developed.”
He, however, expressed optimism saying, “There is a new direction and government has become concerned about that; we are working hard at it, and we are hoping
that with improvement in oil sales and with economic diversification, via agriculture and other sectors, the future will be better than it is
today.”
