BY IKENNA ASOMBA

LAGOS—The President, Ibadan Business School, Mr. Yinka Fasuyi, yesterday, lamented the slow pace of the country’s development despite various developmental plans initiated by past and present administrations.

Blaming over-reliance on foreign aid and products, Fasuyi argued that unless government involves the country’s professional engineering community as a key player in the development plans, improving the standards of living would remain a mirage.

In his lecture entitled: “Entrepreneurship for Development: The Place for Engineering” in Lagos he said: “In Nigeria, we have observed that irrespective of various developmental plans enunciated in the immediate post-colonial period right up to the present, it is sad but true that our various governments have tended to put greater stock on foreign engineers rather than our own engineers.

“From the Kainji Dam up to the Ajaokuta Iron and Steel Complex as well as the design and construction of the nation’s capital city, Abuja, the thinking of the powers-that-be had always been that foreign engineers are preferred to our local engineers. Even the much-trumpeted Second Niger Bridge supposedly to be designed and constructed by our own engineers, seem to have generated a lot more heat than light as the project has become, more or less, a declaration of intent.”