The Kwara state chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (NIEEE) has said that it has concluded a plan to provide solar-powered lights in some communities that have never had electricity in the state.

Speaking after his inauguration as the state chairman of the NIEEE in Ilorin at the weekend, Mr Femi Abidoye of Femtech Technology said that the project is part of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of the organisation and would be provided in three different locations in the three senatorial districts of the state.

“As we make efforts to get better and improve ourselves, we find it necessary to extend a hand of support to communities without electricity.

The sustainable development goal, SDG number 7, calls for affordable, reliable, and clean energy for all by the year 2030.

Unfortunately, there are some communities around us that have never had access to a power supply. Some villages are still far from the grid, with distant hopes.

We plan to raise funding to support these communities with some solar-powered lighting units installed in common places like markets and village squares to make life easier for them”, he said.

Abidoye also disclosed the plan of the organisation to launch a sustainable endowment fund that will provide prizes to the best-graduating students in Electrical Engineering departments across tertiary institutions in Kwara State, saying that “We want to encourage and reward excellence among our young scholars”.

He then called for the support of members in order to achieve the set programmes, adding that “we can improve the engineering profession for our common good and also do well for society”.

In his lecture delivered at the event, titled, ENGINEERING A SAFER WORLD: ROLE OF ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS IN NIGERIA, Engineer Professor Y. A. Adediran of the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, University of Ilorin, said that an engineering product will one day fail, but how long it takes to fail depends on so many factors, most of which are probabilistic.

However, what is paramount is the safety of the product for both the user and the environment during usage”.

The University Don said that safety is a critical engineering ethic, and the cause(s) of failure of an engineering product can be hardware-related, software-related, or human interface-related.

Professor Adediran also said that engineering professionals such as Technicians, Technologists, and Engineers have some roles to play in ensuring that engineering products are safe, particularly for consumers or users.

“These roles include upholding professional ethics at all times, ensuring products are tested during each stage of the production process, creating awareness on reliability, availability, and maintainability issues in the workforce, providing meaningful engineering education right from the secondary school level, revitalising Nigeria's Industrial policy, and realising the importance of human intervention and any issues involved”.