By; MOHAMMED KAWU, Bauchi
The Director-General, National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Engr. Jelani Aliyu has said that the council is poised to developing young talents for designing of automotive products in the country.
He explained that through capacity building training of graduate unemployed youths, the council will be complementing the efforts of Universities that are offering engineering programmes by inculcating into the youths the knowledge of designing components for the Nigerian automotive industry.
Engr. Jelani Aliyu said that to achieve the set objective, the council has so far trained 90 graduates across the five geo-political zones of the country under its solid-works software capacity building training programme for engineering designing of auto components.
The director-general was speaking at the closing ceremony of a two-week capacity building training for the Northeast geo-political zone in Bauchi weekend, said that the council would complete its zonal training programme with the South-South to where the training team would now be shifting.
Represented by the council’s director of research, designs and development, Dr. Fidelis Mfewase, Aliyu explained that three participants were selected from each of the six states making up the Northeast with two additional reserves making 20 trainees that have undergone the intensive training in Bauchi.
He said that after the zonal training, the council would consider conducting the programme in the 36 states of the federation and FCT Abuja, and subsequently to the 109 senatorial districts of the country with a view to inculcate the knowledge into the youths to design auto components
Aliyu who stated that the training programme came up as a result of skills shortage among youths in automotive industry, noted that in the past automotive components were designed using T-square and drawing boards, but with technology improvement day-by-day, software is used for designing automotive components.
“Our council feels we should complement efforts of universities offering engineering prgrammes to inculcate the knowledge into the youths to design components for automotive industry, not just for use in Nigeria, but even sell them in open markets in the international community”, he said.
Engr. Aliyu observed that with over 50 assembly plants in Nigeria, assembling various brands of automotive products, developing youths’ capacity for designing some of these components, would inculcate the knowledge into them to make improvements in our local contents.
He said that components would be designed and fabricated locally to not only fit into our vehicles, but also assist in saving foreign exchange that are used in importing these components for our assembly plants, saying the programme is open for various engineering disciplines for people who are graduates and unemployed.
“The programme has introduce the youths into the basic concepts of designs using software. Technology has move faster as designs are now done using software, and solid work is one of the topmost software use in engineering designs. it is not restrictive to automotive industry; it can be deployed to do so many other things”.
Aliyu further explained that the youths training would positively impact on national development taking into cognizance the unemployment in the country, saying the trained graduates can use the software to design other engineering products, thereby becoming employers of labour while impacting on the nation’s economy.
“The aim of the software is to build the capacity for engineering designs, particularly with respect to automotive industry. The council would want to contribute to national development by way of building human capacity by way of engineering designs, and there are a lot of products that could be designed, fabricate and sell them to end users”, Aliyu said.
In a remark, a representative of Coscharis Group President, collaborators in the capacity building training, Mr. Clement Nedu assured participants that the group is always ready to give all necessary support in their chosen endeavor.
Mr. Clement Nedu also assured the trained young engineers of the group support to getting them entrepreneurship licenses, as well as exposing them to funding whenever they or anyone of them is having good products.
A consultant to the training, Engr. Uchendu Ugochukwu representing Coscharis said that during the two-week intensive capacity building, participants were exposed to various computer engineering designs of components for different vehicles, skills development and strengthening them on understanding the concepts of designs, and so forth.
According to the consultant, capacity building participants were trained skills development and strengthening them on the concepts of designs and manufacturing, and assimilation techniques to make them strong enough to come up with prototypes that serve human needs, and can help Nigerian automotive industry.
Ugochukwu appreciated the national automotive design and development council for the opportunity to bring such skills for such human capacity building to those young talents to be able to conceptualize and come up with designs socially around the automotive sector to meet human needs and solve challenging issues.
One of the twenty capacity building participants, Mr. Isaac Moses Dewa from Adamawa described the 2-week solidworks application training as a wonderful experience, saying “As an engineer there are designs one needs to be able to learn how to design automotive works in the industry”.
Dewa added, “These two weeks under national automotive design and development council, we were able to learnt one of the softwares in solid works to design automotive parts which is really a plus to most of us as engineers to widen our scopes on how to design parts that can be used in the automotive industry”.
