Afe Babalola Tasks COREN on Incessant Building Collapse, Bad Roads

Victor Ogunje in Ado Ekiti

A Legal Icon, Chief Afe Babalola has warned the Council for the Regulation of Engineers in Nigeria(COREN) against maintaining a lukewarm attitude to the frightening and recurrent cases of building collapse and bad roads in the country.

Babalola spoke in Ado Ekiti, yesterday, during the closing of a four-day COREN regional train-the-trainers workshop for implementation of Outcome-Based Education(OBE) in Engineering programmes in Nigerian Universities held at the Afe Babalola University (ABUAD).

The ABUAD’s founder posited that many lives have been lost as a result of building collapse, with the recent one in Lagos State that claimed scores of lives, while carnages had kept on increasing on Nigerian bad roads.
He said these evils were being perpetrated due to compromise on the parts of some engineers.

While interfacing with COREN executives, Babalola appealed to engineers not to take the back seat in the nation’s politics, adding that their interest in politics would help them in formulating the right policies and cognate academic curriculum for the profession.

“Today, there are many stories about collapsed buildings all over Nigeria, particularly in the cities, killing innocent souls. Why? This is largely because standards have been compromised by pecuniary reasons by some unscrupulous engineers.

“What did your council do when Nigerian railway, Nigerian Airways, the National Shipping Line fizzled out? What did your council do when the road network throughout the country suddenly become death-traps?” Babalola asked.
He, however, saluted the OBE programme initiated by COREN, saying it would help in boosting the skills of engineering graduates and make them relevant to nation building .

The Registrar of COREN, Prof. Joseph Odigure, said there was need to strengthen accreditation system for engineering in Nigerian universities for the purpose of producing graduates that would meet local and international demands.
Odigure averred that the rapid pace of globalisation and emerging techlonogies globally, made it necessary for engineering faculties to be properly regulated for local and international recognition of certificates obtained from Nigerian higher institutions.

Elaborating more on the Outcome-Based Education(OBE), Odigure described it as an approach to education that focuses on specific attributes in term of knowledge, skill and attitudes that must be exhibited by students.
“By implementing OBE, students are expected to be able to do more challenging tasks, rather than memorise what was taught. This implies that tertiary education could provide both professional knowledge /skills and all-round attributes to their graduates through OBE approach.

“In addition, OBE helps to empower a workforce that can compete in a global economy of the 21st century as it equips learner to transfer academic success to life in a complex, challenging and high-technology future.

“We observed that many of our engineering graduates don’t secure jobs easily, so with OBE, they can get the required skills, knowledge and attitudes to operate independently. We want to see a system whereby lecturers would be able to teach students to get an expected output not just teaching based on the curriculum alone.

“We want to engage the local artisans and craftsmen , they too have skills so that they can partner with the academics for engineering development, they have to join the engineering revolution . Let us finetune the delivery in engineering. Let us have engineering that is more friendly and that can impact skills to face the challenges of the 21st century for global development”.