Crisis Rocks Welding, Fabrication Sector as Stakeholders Oppose Factional Institute’s Meeting 

Peter Uzoho

The welding and fabrication sector in Nigeria has been engulfed with crisis of interest following the convening of a meeting to be held in Port Harcourt by a faction of the Nigerian Institute of Welding (NIW) against the authorisation of the Authorised National Body (ANB) of the institute.

The leaders and Board of Trustees (BoT) of NIW, who condemned the moves by some members of the body to create crisis within its fold, said their action was an attempt to scuttle efforts of the Nigerian government to boost local content in the welding and fabrication profession in the country.

Last week, some members of the BoT and the authorised national body, an affiliate of NIW, had called for a stakeholders meeting scheduled to hold in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on November 8, 2022 (today).

But the proposed meeting was dismissed with a disclaimer published in some national dailies, which was jointly signed by the Chairman and Secretary of NIW’s BoT, Dr. Chudi Egbunike; and Dr. Solomon Edebiri.

However, addressing journalists yesterday in Lagos, over the latest development, Egbunike said the meeting was the handiwork of disgruntled persons opposed to NIW’s alignment with the federal government to domesticate welding profession in the country.

“There are a few persons oppose to our efforts to work with the federal government to domesticate welding profession certification in-country as against acclaim international certification.

“They claim that operators in the oil and gas industry prefer the international certification but the question is how does that help the development of the sector in terms of local content,” he said.

According to him, the institute had in the past five years worked with the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology to draw up a national policy framework aimed at ensuring that welding and fabrication pivot industrial transformation of the country.

He stated that the Federal Executive Council under President Muhammadu Buhari had graciously approved the National Policy on Welding and Welding-related fields at its meeting held on October 26, this year.

Noting that all was now set for the full implementation of the policy, Egbunike said some members who were opposed to the move were out to deceive the public.

“The institute is not part of the meeting as we will collaborate with the federal government and other relevant agencies as well as our registered members to promote the Nigerian local content drive and domesticate welding practice in Nigeria in line with global best practices,” he said.

On his part, Edebiri noted that those calling for the meeting in Port Harcourt were intruder as most of them have not rectified their membership with the institute.

He identified one Mr. Ayo Adeniyi as being the brain behind the development, saying, “Ayo is the person behind the whole scheme. Interestingly, he asked his fellow collaborators to sign a document the content of which they were ignorant.

“If you look at the document they are circulating around, they signed only on the second page not on the first page. Apparently, he gave them to sign a blank document and he developed the page one and attached to the second page. So it has nothing to do with the image of NIW and welding in Nigeria.”

Edebiri further said, “Most of the people who signed the meeting announcement are not even members of the institute because if you go back at the record of the institute, they haven’t even subscribed to their membership for years.

“And when you have not subscribed to your membership, you are not a member. These are people that believe that if they do welding, they are stakeholders but as members, they are not. So they don’t have right to use the name of the institute to call a meeting.

“Worse still our investigation shows that those people purportedly signed there, have all claimed differently that they signed in error.”