Don Profers Solution To Salvage Nation’s Dwindling Economy

OGBONNA IWUAGWU

Remy Uche, a professor of Industrial and production Engineering, Federal University of Technology Owerri, FUTO, has disclosed that the nation’s economy could be re-engineered from its current state of consumption to production economy by activating the manufacturing mode.

According to him, to perform this act successfully, the existing gap between the theoretical engineer and the practical engineer would be zero, adding that “If we re-engineer our economy from the one that is consumer based, where emphasis is hinged heavily on how much people are buying or spending to production based where the production of goods and services are highlighted, engineers must have adequately responded in providing the solution for the recession in the country”.

Professor Uche, who is also the director, Public Procurement Research Centre of the Institution, stated this in a lecture entitled “Re-Awakening and Imbibing the Culture of Manufacturing Enterprises: needful Drivers for Industrial Development in Nigeria” which he delivered at the 4th Edition of the Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu Annual lecture series held in Owerri, the Imo Capital.

He noted with regret that in spite of series of proposals and implementations of different forms of reforms on the nation’s development plan by successive administrations, incommensurate outcomes which visibly failed to meet the expectation of both the citizens and the drivers of the policy continued to plague the nation.

“Indeed, it is regrettable that our situation is likened to a bird that flew down the ground and perched on an anthill with the mind of gaining reasonable altitude but wisely adjudged to be at the same place”.

Expressing worry over the undeveloped and unindustrialized status of the nation, the don pointed out that a cursory review of the recent intolerable acts of inhuman dealings by Nigerians within the Nigeria’s geographical space and against Nigerians outside Nigeria are demonstrations of the deplorable state of the nation.

Professor Uche enumerated the social menaces bedeviling the nation such as terrorism, inflation corruption, injustice, epileptic economy, armed robbery and banditry, slavery and human trafficking and contended that placing the nation back on the path of economic recovery and growth would require the re-awakening and rebuilding the deteriorated infrastructure and making more goods and services available to the citizenry at affordable prices.

He explained that the annual series lecture was conceived and designed to provide a platform for engineers and technocrats to provide solutions and to render professional advice on tropical national and societal issues and problems, promote good governance through the development of strategic planning and the application of appropriate methods and standards in the execution of infrastructural projects and maintenance of municipal services for the comfort of the governed and the government.

Chief (Engr.) Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, who decried the rising tempo of youth unemployment in the country, enjoined the State and Federal governments to come together and establish industries at least one in every LGA in the country and which should be given to experts to manage.