Building Skilled Human Capacity in Engineering for Sustainable National Development

1
Building Skilled Human Capacity in Engineering
for Sustainable National Development

• Professor Augustine C Odinma, Ph.D.
• Nwojo N Agwu, Ph.D.
• and
• Ago K M Quaye, Ph.D.
• School of IT Communications, American
  University of Nigeria, Yola

2
Introduction (i)

• The continent of Africa is experiencing
  unprecedented growth in many markets. It is
  speculated that investors in the advanced nations
  are increasingly looking to emerging markets for
  growth 1. In a recent Vodafone Report 2,
  Africa is said to be the fastest-growing mobile
  market in the world during the past five years,
  with Nigerias mobile market growing at over 100
  percent per year. The oil and the telecom sectors
  are the two dominant revenue generating sectors
  impacting national development in Nigeria.

3
Introduction (ii)

• The Nigerian telecom market has been doubling
  each year since 2003 from under one million lines
  to over fourteen million lines in 2006. On the
  other hand, during the same period the price of
  oil per barrel has more than doubled from less
  than 30 to over 80. It is predicted that these
  sectors would continue to generate increasing
  business returns for many years to come. Hence,
  it is expedient that human capacity be built to
  match anticipated demand.

4
Introduction (iii)

• The ability of a country to achieve sustainable
  development depends largely on its human capacity
  3. Although the two key wealth- generating
  sectors require effective management to thrive,
  skilled human engineering resources are
  inevitably required to sustain the development.
  It is insufficient to build human engineering
  capacity, but to sustain development the
  engineers must be skilled. Skilled is
  emphasized because Nigeria is not necessarily
  short of engineers, but it is a fact that quality
  and skilled engineers are currently in short
  supply.

5
Introduction (iv)

• Apart from attracting skilled engineers, it has
  been argued that effective management and
  retention of staff is inevitable. We train our
  managers through a long process taking many
  years, just to lose them in a flash, through
  negligence, cutting corners, indiscipline, greed,
  corruption, etc 4. It has been opined that
  retention can be enhanced through proper
  information with regards to expectations relating
  to employee job assignment, opportunities, pay
  increases and incentives 5. Maslow 6 in his
  hierarchy of needs gives different scenarios that
  would impact employee retention. There are those
  who believe that there are needs to focus career
  development in population needs and thereby
  create job satisfaction through career
  development 7.

6
Introduction (v)

• No sustainable national development is possible
  without human capacity building 3. Thus, this
  paper focuses on the various factors that
  influence the building of human capacity
  essential for sustainable national development.
  It also takes a snapshot of barriers that inhibit
  skilled capacity building and constructs a human
  resources model for sustaining national
  development. The telecom sector is used as a case
  study to drive home the points.

7
FACTORS IMPACTING HUMAN CAPACITY

• In this paper, we identify six factors that
  impact human capacity for national development.

8
Government (i)

• The role of government in human capacity building
  cannot be overemphasized. Government can
  formulate policies that affect culture, research
  and development, and science and technology.
  Policies and appointments into engineering-based
  parastatals must be void of nepotism. If
  engineers are appointed based on who they know
  and family ties, most of those making critical
  decisions would be mediocres and one cannot
  expect optimal results from people who are not
  knowledgeable 11 in the position they occupy.
  That means one cannot expect a government agency
  manned by such individuals to provide sufficient
  leadership that will help sustain development.

9
Government (ii)

• It took several disasters in the airline industry
  for the government to realize that the core
  business of the industry should be managed by
  professionals. The privatization of NITEL was
  almost mission impossible because of
  incompetence in the body of planners. Even the
  first output for the privatization of NITEL, the
  advertisement for expression of interest, was
  faulty because the meaning of telecom companies
  in the advertisement was in error 12. Moreover,
  for the same reason, the privatization plans
  lacked social agenda 13.

10
Government (iii)

• Today, most of the GSM services are performing
  poorly because competent telecom individuals are
  left out of the decision-making process.
  Appointment of telecom staff and consultants in
  most of the government agencies are based on who
  you know rather than what you know. Telecom is a
  major technical profession and only trained and
  experienced professionals can make informed
  decisions in this field. The poor quality of
  telecom services cannot be corrected by
  incompetent appointees co-opted by friends or
  affiliates. Incompetent planners would only
  exacerbate an already bad situation because of
  lack of technical know-how.

11
Government (iv)

• Apart from some dubious acts of some of the
  operators, the actions of various organs of
  government contribute to the poor services. The
  appointment of consultants for the House
  Committee on Communications, the Senate Committee
  on Communications and the appointment of
  consultant by NCC must of necessity be filled by
  telecom experts. The credentials of appointees
  must be verified and the individuals must be
  clearly identified to be a telecom architects,
  designers and/or planners who possess substantial
  experience in a good telecom environment. Proper
  oversight functions would be very useful in
  redeeming an ailing telecom situation. Clearly,
  symptoms of poor quality will be easily
  identified and checked if regulatory roles are
  assigned to experienced telecom professionals.

12
Government (v)

• If we are desirous to change the telecom industry
  for good it may be important to check the
  appointments made in the past and make
  appropriate changes.
• In 2006, a presidential committee on
  Telecommunications was formed. A cursory review
  of the credentials of members would reveal that
  majority of them are not telecom professionals.
  It is recommended that in the future composition
  of such committees be professionals, if positive
  results are expected.

13
Culture (i)

• Culture has a tremendous influence on the
  development of a country. A culture that
  recognizes and rewards talent and industry
  promotes economic and social development.
  However, a culture that promotes nepotism and
  sycophancy entraps a nation in the quicksand of
  intellectual decay, political upheaval and
  economic doom. A cursory look at the list of the
  major economic powers of the world reveals one
  common trend a culture that creates an
  environment in which every person takes pride in
  what they do. In such cultures, everyone
  recognizes the fact that their talent complements
  others.

14
Culture (ii)

• In order to sustain national development, it is
  imperative to change the work attitude of
  Nigerians. Most people believe they can go in and
  out of their offices as they please. Some engage
  in other complementary businesses contrary to
  their employment contract. Furthermore, some
  believe that public fund is a national cake
  that should be shared and government appointment
  is therefore an opportunity to partake in the
  sharing. Some older government staff, because of
  their orientation and protracted dubious ways, do
  not even believe that any other Nigerian is good
  enough to competently and successfully accomplish
  an engineering assignment. This mindset must
  change. The government and private sector must
  embark upon programs to change this way of
  thinking in order to abate the ominous spread of
  these dangerous ways of thinking that can only
  inhibit sustained national development.

15
Technology (i)

• Technology and transfer of technology are an
  indispensable factor in sustaining national
  development. Information is power and the world
  is becoming a global village and for companies to
  thrive management information systems (IS) are
  inevitable. IS can be defined as an organized
  collection of people, hardware, software,
  communication networks and data resources that
  collects, transforms and disseminates information
  within and among organizations 8. IS will be an
  essential tool in meeting the various government
  initiatives ranging from NEEDS to 2020 economic
  initiatives. Yet, majority of the populace have
  not touched or do not know how to operate a
  computer.

16
Technology (ii)

• Most of the transfer of technology activities
  occur in virtual reality and through long
  distance learning. Sadly, Nigeria lacks
  appropriate infrastructure to create an enabling
  environment to bridge the digital divide.
  Moreover, communication services are still very
  slow and poor in quality. Although there are now
  many operators, the teledensity is still very
  low. There is a need for government to make
  communication services a priority and also create
  an enabling environment that would bridge the
  digital divide faster.

17
Technology (iii)

• Moreover, there is an urgent need to create
  conducive atmosphere for effectively removing
  communication bottlenecks. Odinma 9, 10 has
  suggested that the communication services in the
  country would continue to deteriorate unless
  necessary effort is made to address the lack of
  sufficient communication bandwidth in the
  country. He further suggested what the government
  and private sector must do to urgently address
  the bandwidth problems.

18
Human Retention (i)

• Retention of engineers is another major area of
  concern. Many firms complain that they spend a
  lot of resources to train staff only to lose them
  to other companies. This complaint is misplaced
  for two reasons. First, work place training is
  not firmly entrenched in the system of
  governance, so most employers rather than feeling
  that they are investing in their business,
  erroneously feel that they did the trained staff
  a favour. This is because most employers do not
  see their employee as a valuable asset vital for
  their success.

19
Human Retention (ii)

• Second, if an employee is treated very well, he
  will be difficult to be enticed. It is important
  to make employees feel as part owners of a
  business with appropriate incentives and
  remunerations. Engineers should get salaries
  commensurate with their profession. There is
  nothing wrong in giving engineers a special
  salary scale as in the medical profession after
  all, in many institutions of higher learning
  engineering students pay comparatively higher
  fees.

20
Human Retention (iii)

• There is a brain in the country. Most of the
  competent engineers find it difficult to return
  to Nigeria because the atmosphere is not
  conducive to do so. The government must do what
  is necessary to attract competent Nigerian
  engineers living abroad to come back and support
  the national development initiative, which will
  obviously help the 2020 government initiative.

21
Research and Development (i)

• Nigeria and most developing nations rely on RD
  performed abroad, without any concerted effort to
  reverse this trend. However, it has been said
  that domestic RD performance is an important
  indicator of a nation's innovative capacity and
  its prospects for future growth, productivity,
  and ST competitiveness. 14. In 2000, global
  Research and Development performance was
  estimated 14 to be 729 billion. Of this
  amount, the United States of America and Japan,
  the two largest economies, are said to have
  accounted for half of this total. Others are
  Germany (50.9 billion), China (48.9 billion),
  India (20 billion), and Brazil (13.6).

22
Research and Development (ii)

• In fact, Chinas performance jumped to 72
  billion in 2002. The same report indicates that
  Research and Development funds by China and India
  are increasing at a faster rate than in other
  countries. This, of course, explains the rate at
  which their economies are growing. This also
  accounts for the growing skilled labor
  scientists, engineers, etc that these countries
  are turning out from their educational
  institutions each year. These large and buoyant
  economies are sustained by the human capacity in
  science and engineering that these countries have
  built over the years and continue to plan for and
  build.

23
Research and Development (iii)

• For Nigeria to join the ranks of developed
  countries as speculated in its 2020 initiative,
  it is imperative that research be adequately
  funded and research results developed and
  transformed into useful products. Research
  activities, academic or industrial, directly
  build human capacity for any country. It is
  through these activities that new technologies
  are born and existing ones adapted. How can a
  country like Nigeria invest in research? Nigeria
  has invested in some form of research. The
  problem is that what it has invested in research
  is well below what it should be.

24
Training (i)

• Nigeria has many engineers, but, sadly, most of
  them know just the engineering theory, but not
  necessarily the dynamics of its application.
  Private companies should imbibe the culture of
  retraining its staff for specialization.
  Moreover, in the telecom industry, developments
  are occurring at a rapid pace. It is imperative
  that engineers undergo periodic training to keep
  abreast of current technologies because that
  knowledge would be essential in sustaining
  national development.

25
Training (ii)

• In Nigeria, there are currently many unemployed
  engineering graduates, who also lack proper and
  competent knowledge in the chosen field. There
  are key engineering areas that are vital at this
  point in time for national development and
  sustenance. It is the contention of the authors
  that the government can invest in these engineers
  by providing them with additional professional
  training either within Nigeria or abroad to
  become competent practitioners.

26
Training (iii)

• Training at Nigerian universities lack proper
  laboratory equipment. This impacts the
  competencies of the products of the universities.
  As a requirement for accreditation, COREN and NUC
  must increase the minimum standards of
  requirements in the various engineering
  laboratories.

27
Conclusions (i)

• The Government of Nigeria has set 2020 as the
  year it expects Nigeria to be ranked among the 20
  strongest economies in the world. While it is
  quite ambitious, it is also achievable if
  government takes the relevant steps to address
  human capacity resource requirements. This paper
  has considered human capacity in engineering as
  an essential ingredient for sustainable national
  development, a key for the achievement of the
  2020 initiative. Six factors have been considered
  by the authors, which, in their judgment,
  influence human capacity. The six factors are
  technology, government, research, retention,
  culture and training.

28
Conclusions (ii)

• It is essential that government takes cognizance
  of the fact that engineering appointments must be
  void of nepotism. Appointments should be based on
  competency. Ethnicity, quota system or social
  affiliation should not be applicable to
  engineering appointments.

29
Conclusions (iii)

• Culture has a tremendous influence on the
  development of a country. The work ethics of most
  Nigerians, particularly most civil servants must
  change. There must be government and private
  sector programs to change the mindset of the
  populace. There should be a concerted effort by
  both government and the private sector to retain
  engineers through differential salary payments
  and incentives.

30
Conclusions (iv)

• Another major factor that is pivotal to
  sustainable development is Research and
  Development. For Nigeria to join the ranks of the
  developed countries as speculated in its 2020
  initiative, it is imperative that research be
  adequately funded. Government should support
  university research and researchers. The private
  sector must be encouraged to engage in research
  as is done in developed countries. As a rule,
  companies should apply a portion of their
  earnings to research.

31
Conclusions (v)

• Finally, training of employees and potential
  employee is a major investment in the future of
  the country and must be seen as such by all.
  Government should invest to make our engineering
  graduates competent practitioners of their
  profession. The private sector must be encouraged
  to train their engineering staff periodically.

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