Buhari accuses engineers of involvement in pipeline vandalism

 President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday charged the leadership of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering to talk to their members working with multinationals or government on the need to safeguard the nation’s oil pipelines.

He said ordinary Nigerians, without the required technical know-how, could not go far into the sea to vandalise pipelines.

Buhari gave the charge shortly after he was decorated as the Grand Patron of the NAE at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The call came at a time when renewed militancy in the Niger Delta area had caused a drastic reduction in the nation’s oil production, causing a sharp drop in revenue.

The President also faulted the position of the group that Nigerian engineers were being underutilised.

He said Nigerian engineers played active roles in the construction of the nation’s refineries.

Buhari said, “I think that if Nigerian engineers are denied their roles, it is not the fault of the profession, it is the fault of some individual governments.

“Other governments have done their best and found Nigerian engineers competent and cost-effective. Nigerian engineers are very quick in their performance on the field.

“If I will go in the negative side, how can an ordinary Nigerian go into the sea, 70Km or more, go down two metres and blow up oil installations?

“That cannot be an ordinary Nigerian. So, I hope you will appeal to your colleagues to make sure that what we have built, they should safeguard them whether they are working with multinationals or the government.”

Buhari said his administration would utilise the talents and skills of local engineers to rebuild ailing infrastructure across the country, describing indigenous engineers as ‘‘competent and cost-effective.’’

He said the well-trained and highly experienced engineers had contributed immensely to the infrastructural development of the country and that they remained indispensable.

He noted that both the military and civilian administrations over the years depended on Nigerian engineers for designs and constructions across the country.

“By insisting that we must be cost-effective in building infrastructure, we will utilise Nigerian engineers. I respect them a lot and I know it takes time to be trained as an engineer,” he said.

The President noted that local engineers contributed more than 90 per cent to the design and realisation of two refineries, 2,500km of pipelines and 20 depots in the country during his tenure as Minister of Petroleum in the mid 1970s.

He added that the success of the Petroleum Trust Fund was largely hinged on their skills.

“Somehow, every time and anywhere I have served in this country, we found it cost-effective to use Nigerian engineers and we relied on their capacity to understudy, learn and deliver.

“It will be wrong to fault Nigerian engineers for the failure of refineries. You should blame the political leadership. How can you build and not know how to maintain an asset,” the President asked.

Buhari said individual political leaders should be blamed for Nigeria’s ailing infrastructure, not the engineers who had always been willing to contribute to national development.

Earlier in her remarks, the President of NAE, Mrs. Joana Maduka, noted that in the last one year, Nigerian engineering companies performed well in the procurement and construction of a 600MW power generating plant and a 330KV switching station, the biggest in the national grid.

The NAE President added that the role of an academy of engineering all over the world was to serve as the think tank for the technological and economic development of a nation.

Maduka, who observed that the anti-corruption effort of the administration was a move in the right direction, said it would bring about economic transformation in the country.

She also expressed the academy’s delight at the desire of the Buhari’s administration to fix all the infrastructural deficits in the country.

He said, “This effort is very germane to the development of our nation. For this to be done effectively and efficiently, inputs are required from all cadres of engineering disciplines.