A deliberate effort by the
government to encourage the Nigerian engineers will be at the driving seat if adequate power supply in the country is achieved.
The Training Manager, Engineering Practice and Resource Centre in Lagos Dayo Olugboye, who stated this in an interview  with newsmen in Lagos, recently, said there had not been any deliberate attempt by the government to encourage local engineering entrepreneurs to take charge of projects in the country.
He said most of the power projects were being executed by expatriates, alleging that they were given adequate incentives by their home country governments.
According to him, there are trade promotional activities and efforts of foreign governments towards promoting their own engineering entrepreneurs which he noted, helped their economics to grow at the expense of Nigeria’s economy.
He regretted that the development had been largely contributing to increasing rate of unemployment hitting engineering graduates.
Olugboye stated further that lack of jobs for engineers has been worsened by the fact that most local firms have no jobs for young graduates.
“There are existing firms that do not get regular jobs from government to keep them in existence”, the existing ones, he said cannot adequately pay the engineers that they engaged because they do not have sustainable job flow.
He further remarked that, “we do not have local experts who can carry some engineering projects to the next level because if you are not part of the engineering or the installation of any facility, it would be difficult for you to sustain it”.
Olugboye said, as a result of the situation there was high dependency on foreign stock to keep the systems in operation.
He expressed concern that shortage of gas would continue to put investments in the power sector at risk, noting that the investors would have done their business plan on the basis that they would be getting gas to power their plants, but in absence of gas, the level of generation in terms of mega watts would be reduced.