With chemical engineering's potential to drive Nigeria's economic transformation, stakeholders in the profession have emphasized the need for practitioners to develop essential skills in risk management spanning vital sectors such as oil and gas processing, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and renewable energy, ultimately towards boosting Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and limiting losses.
Call for Risk Management Competence
The Executive Director of Industrial Risks Protection Consultant Limited (IRPC), Jacob Adeosun, led the call at a public lecture organized by the Board of Trustees of Engineer Anthony Olufemi Shobo Foundation for Chemical Engineering Education and Research. This event was held under the auspices of the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers (NSChE) in honor of the doyen of Chemical Engineering in Nigeria, Anthony Shobo, who turns 95 this weekend in Abeokuta.
The forum featured the presentation of certificates and cheques to the four best winners in the scholarship scheme instituted for students of chemical engineering who participated from across Nigerian universities. The first winner of the scholarship scheme, Miss Alero Afinotan of Covenant University, won the sum of N1 million. The second winner, Miss Judith Opoke, a student of the University of Calabar, received N600,000. The third winner, David Ibok of Covenant University, won N400,000, while the fourth winner, Victory Ohre from the Federal University of Petroleum, Effurun, received N250,000.
Guest Speaker's Address
Speaking on “Industrial risk management and chemical engineering profession in today’s world,” Adeosun, who was the guest speaker, argued that all engineers must aspire to have risk management competence, as their roles are crucial to the survival of critical sectors from oil and gas to manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and waste management industries.
“The chemical engineer is a versatile problem-solver embedded in nearly every sector of the global economy. The profession has become cross-functional, dynamic, and indispensable to modern industrial risk management. New imperative core skills now include systems thinking and holistic analysis, quantitative and statistical modelling, process optimization under new constraints, hazards identification and root cause analysis, and multi-variable problem solving,” he said.
