Ogunba: Control Engineering Will Address Diverse Challenges

A Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Dr. Kolawole Samuel Ogunba, speaks on how Control Engineering can address Nigeria’s multi-dimensional challenges, the impact of Artificial Intelligence on economies, among other industry issues. Emma Okonji presents the excerpts:

Control Engineering is a new field of study and you are confident of its positive impact on economies. What exactly is Control Engineering and how can it be applied to address challenges in the tech sector?

Control Engineering, which is my area of specialisation, used to be a sub-discipline of Engineering that designs control systems for engineering, biological and social systems to ensure such systems obey specified command signals as quickly and efficiently as possible. But over time, Control itself has evolved into several disciplines beyond Engineering and has grown much bigger than Engineering, and I have had opportunity to teach several students on Control Engineering and I am passionate about it.

Control as a concept is about achieving specific objectives, and it sits at the centre of every discipline and ensures that commands are obeyed to achieve specific objectives. 

Control tends to make all the sub-systems in engineering work better. It tends to improve on embedded systems, instrumentation system, power system, computer system, among others. Control is used to solve challenges in design engineering, which is about putting systems and structures together to achieve engineering objectives. In Electrical Engineering for instance, it covers control and instrumentation systems, where the instrumentation system is all about measurement. 

Control Engineering can therefore be used to address several challenges in the technology sector. It can be used to address issues in medicine, communication, computing, social psychology, population census, among several other areas.

Control Engineering is key to national development, because it offers solutions to diverse challenges in the Nigerian tech space. Nigeria should lay more emphasis on Control Engineering and apply it in addressing its myriad of challenges, especially in the technology ecosystem. Some of the identified challenges that Nigeria has as a country are weak power supply, insecurity, inflation, harsh business economy, among others, but Control Engineering has a key role in addressing all the identified challenges. Of a truth, Control Engineering can address any challenge, if properly applied. We can design control systems that can locate bandits in their hideouts, that can boost electricity supply, and we can design control systems for all our fiscal and monetary policies that can address inflation and detect crude oil theft and vandalism of oil pipelines and many more. However, despite its many benefits, little attention is paid to Control Engineering, with no support from government.

How can you describe your passion for Control Engineering, and how can you involve government and the Nigerian citizens to pay more attention to Control Engineering because of its positive impact on economies?

I am so passionate about Control Engineering because of its many benefits for economic growth, but my worry is that very little attention is paid to Control Engineering in Nigeria, despite its numerous advantages. At OAU, my PhD Supervisor, Prof. Oluwafemi Taiwo, myself, and other experts, set up a control society, called the Society of Automation, Control and Instrumentation (SACIN), as a result of the gap that was discovered in Nigeria by international bodies.  

I have gone for international conferences on Control Engineering where Nigerians were not represented. We had also attended a Control Conference in Orlando in the United States of America, and another one in South Africa, where Nigerians were represented, but we were told by international bodies that Nigerians do not have a Control Society, and that motivated us to create the Nigeria Control Society called the SACIN, after South Africa had formed its Control Society since 1960s.     

The Nigeria SACIN is still active till date but Nigerian members find it difficult to pay their annual dues because of the poor remuneration in the Nigerian academic system.

What is your view about the dearth of skills in engineering and technology in Nigeria and how can Control Engineering be applied in addressing the skills shortage?

There is deficiency in the training of engineers, which has resulted in the shortage of people with the required engineering and technology skills.

Looking at the university system, I think the school system should be ready to train more Nigerians in the field of technology and engineering, but the challenge the school system is facing is about the shortage of the critical mass of academics among the lecturers that should train and equip the students. It boils down to the way government runs the school system, thus making the school system a less attractive place for critical skills training. Most of the lecturers in the engineering department and across other department are not motivated to teach because they are poorly remunerated and that of course affect their productivity. Lecturers are dissatisfied with the condition of service and the level of infrastructure at their disposal to teach, which will of course have ripple effects on the teaching of the students. So, students across most tertiary institutions are not being trained as much as they should have been trained and the development is affecting the students who are the product of the school system. Although the situation is not the same with all tertiary institutions, because in OAU where I lecture, most of the departments have standard curriculum that is of global standard and the teaching is standard, with better infrastructure. The few lecturers in the OAU system are capable, but they are not enough to impact the right skills on the students.

In OAU, we are only two lecturers left teaching Control Engineering and the pressure is much on us to deliver, given the number of students that we attend to every year.

There is a general belief that the school curriculum for tertiary institutions, especially in the Computer and Engineering departments, should be reviewed in line with emerging technology and industrial needs. What are your thoughts on this?

The issue with curriculum review is a departmental issue because in a faculty where there are several departments, some of the departments may be running standard curriculum, while some may not. So it will be wrong to generalise that school curriculum should be reviewed across tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Let me speak to the Faculty of Technology in Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), were I teach. There is a concerted effort by the faculty to always update the curriculum of all the departments under the Faculty of Technology and we have maintained that tradition for a long time now. In the Electrical Electronics Department of OAU, the department has patterned its curriculum review process after some of the very best institutions in the world. We have people from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, United States, that constantly review and update the curriculum of the Electrical Electronics Department of OAU. In the past 10 to 15 years, the department has introduced new courses in line with the evolution of emerging technologies that are shaping the global technology space. We looked at the best university in the world and model our curriculum in line with theirs. For instance, Intelligent Control, which is a new course, has been introduced in the Electrical and Electronics Department of OAU and I teach that particular course. Intelligent Control is another form of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is a curriculum review process that uses some of the best ideas from the best institutions in the world that gave rise to Intelligent Control as a course.  

AI as emerging technology is shaping the technology space and driving teaching and learning in tertiary institutions. How have emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT) helped in teaching and learning across tertiary institutions?   

The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT), no doubt, is enhancing teaching and learning in tertiary institutions. As a lecturer, I apply these emerging technologies in Control Engineering, while teaching Intelligent Control and Non-linear Control as a course. When I was taught Intelligent Control and Non-linear Control back then in my university days, there were lots of calculations that were introduced into the course, which made it difficult to comprehend, but with the application of AI, AR and IoT, it has become a lot easier to teach and a lot easier to comprehend, and that is the power of emerging technologies on education.   

I am a practical person and I use emerging technologies to better explain certain engineering concepts. The Department of Computer Science in OAU is doing so well in using emerging technologies like Augmented Reality in teaching their students and they are big at that and have been able to secure grants worth millions of dollars. The Electrical and Electronics Department in OAU has gotten grant to build some AI facilities in the department.

Most tech experts are of the view that AI and other emerging technologies will make current jobs obsolete and also take away jobs from people in the next few years. What are your thoughts?

We must admit that we are in a new phase of development where emerging technologies like AI, AR and Robotics are driving the tech space and shaping our thinking and the way we do things, but even at that, I think we should look more at the benefits of AI and look less at the negative part of the technology. AI helps in deep reinforcement learning in schools and Control Engineering and other forms of Engineering are taking advantage of the positive aspect of AI technology to address several identified challenges, both in the Nigerian economy and global economies. AI is the reason why self-driving cars can function effectively on our roads, without human interference. Application of AI in medicine, aviation and other sectors, is huge, and this makes AI application important for fast economic growth, despite some of its negative features like making jobs obsolete and loss of jobs. However, I believe AI will also create new digital jobs and we need to train people to effectively handle such digital jobs.

In the area of self-driving cars, there is likely going to be a drastic reduction in road accidents, because AI-controlled vehicles have sensors that will enable cars interact digitally without friction, and such advantage is huge. Again if I have a robot that can attend to customers and meet their demands, then I do not need to hire and pay humans to do such jobs which robots that are driven by AI can do, thereby saving cost. On the other hand, new digital jobs will be created through AI technology.  

Again lecturers have to evolve with technology, if we know that our students can use ChatGPT to do their assignments. So I do not think we should dismiss emerging technologies because of what they can do. Instead, we have a duty to evolve with technology growth. So the best way to go about it is to attract the positive part of emerging technologies and regulate the negative part of the technologies.

What is your view about the rate at which Nigerians from across all sectors are leaving the country in their large numbers, including those in the academia, after acquiring the necessary digital skills?

The mass movement of Nigerians is a clear case of brain drain and those in the academia are not left out. Before now, we used to think it was peculiar to those in the medical line, but today, almost every sector is feeling the pain of brain drain, including the school system, where lecturers are also leaving the country in search of better jobs, welfare and security.

The school system is in trouble because lecturers are retiring, several of them have died in the last five years because of poor welfare, and many are currently leaving the country for better remuneration. In the Electronics and Electrical Department where I teach Control Engineering, only two of us are left teaching the course and other departments are also facing the same challenge, which must be addressed urgently.     

What is the state of infrastructure in schools and how is it affecting teaching and learning in tertiary institutions?

The state of infrastructure in tertiary institutions is nothing to write home about. Lecturers struggle to use old and refurbished equipment in their laboratories in teaching the students, because government is under-funding education.    

At OAU, we still get support from students that have graduated from the university that donated some laboratory equipment to our department. OAU used to be known for producing transistors and we still have the semi-conductor laboratory in my department, but it has gone obsolete because there are no new forms of equipment.

In spite of the poor state of infrastructure in our schools, Nigerian students perform creditably well when they further their studies abroad. What is the secret behind their sterling performance outside of Nigeria?

Nigerian students are intelligent and have the zeal to learn new things. By the time they are exposed to new environment where there is standard infrastructure, they perform better because of that zeal and resilience in them.

The typical Nigerian student is very innovative, with high entrepreneurial spirit and will do better in an environment where there is steady power and better infrastructure.    

What is the level of government support for research and development in tertiary institutions and what is the impact on academic growth?

Government support for research and development in tertiary institutions is very poor, and it is impacting negatively on academic growth.

In the first place, lecturers are not well remunerated and that alone is affecting their zeal for research and development, talk less of the poor support from government for research and development. The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) is about the biggest thing that government can say they are doing for tertiary institutions, but it is not available for lecturers who want to access such fund. What most lecturers do now is to get foreign grants to help in their research works.    

Nigerian government should be able to fund research and development in tertiary institutions, instead of allowing lecturers to seek for foreign grants that are not easy to access.